


Metanoia

by vulturewomen



Category: The Creatures | Cow Chop RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Small Town, Crushes, Death, Domestic Violence, Drowning, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Gore, Graphic Description of Corpses, M/M, Minor Character Death, Town Where Nothing Happens, Toxicity, lake monsters, the 80's, time jumps
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-04-05 17:01:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14048784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulturewomen/pseuds/vulturewomen
Summary: Something grasps at his ankle. A skilled fisherman has been bitten aplenty by fish and can identify a fish just by the sharpness of its teeth. Whatever is grasping his ankle is not a fish, nor is it using its mouth.Aleks watches the water move. The blood sits on the surface like oil; unmoving. He watches the spill part and a head break the surface. There’s something in the water watching him. Its hair sits, matted and sodden, along the water; blacker than night.





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [narzisstische](https://archiveofourown.org/users/narzisstische/gifts).



> TW: death, implied murder, implied drowning  
> Here we go again. This is another Town Where Nothing Happens Until It Finally Does fic, because that's my favourite aesthetic to write, regardless of whether I've finished the other fic or not. 
> 
> This is dark. Be warned.
> 
> As per, this isn't beta'd so if anyone spots any mistakes, let me know. I'm over at mightydogfood on Tumblr if you want to say hi.

* * *

 M E T A N O I A

_**prologue** _

* * *

****

The swell breaks against the legs of the pier, the turbid waters frothing white at its lip; the wood beginning to rot against the beating. A thick, white fog settles in across the lake. The morning sky is an unassuming blackness; dawn sat just behind the trees in anticipation for her own arrival. The crows fly in languid circles as devourers; thieves to the pickings that float atop of the water. The rain starts. It falls like mortars and the drops are swallowed into the lake.

A fisherman sits, dangling his legs off the end of the pier with his feet in the water. He kicks his legs back and forth, impatiently waiting for his reel to catch. The sinker bobs unnoticed on the surface and the fisherman screws up his toes in frustration. A loud splash catches the fisherman’s attention, and he watches with bated breath, waiting for his sinker to disappear. But it doesn’t move at all. The fisherman squints past the fog and into the water. He watches big bubbles float to the surface, far too big for bass or walleyes, and he swallows, uneasily.

He watches the water even out. Placid in the darkness before dawn, waiting. It watches the fisherman as the fisherman watches it. An abyss.

The sinker drops. It disappears under the water in an instant, and the fisherman grasps for his fishing pole, reeling the line in, eagerly. The line offers no resistance, and the sinker sits wet in his lap, empty. He frowns, both in frustration and anger, and reaches across his equipment and into the tin for a worm to bait the hook.

The water moves, again. The fisherman stops what he’s doing, his hands in between the task of impaling the worm on the hook. The worm flails as its being crushed and is offered no mercy. He looks through his lashes, with shadows being hard to distinguish in the darkness, and sees nothing. He hears nothing.

The water sits silently.

 _Something_ grasps at his ankle. A skilled fisherman has been bitten aplenty by fish and can identify a fish just by the sharpness of its teeth. Whatever is grasping his ankle is not a fish, nor is it using its mouth.

He tries not to panic. He tries not to think of his wife, of his beautiful daughter. He tries to think of God, of Heaven, of the good deeds he has done in this life.

Something sharp digs into the bone and pulls, and the fisherman plunges into the water. The final word of the fisherman is “no”, sung loudly, a guttural scream that is engulfed by the lake. The air from his mouth sits on the surface as a eulogy, a short-lived goodbye. The air bubble pops. The water sits, undisturbed.

Dawn slithers over the trees, and the sky is bathed in bands of orange.

The water sits silently.

 

* * *

 

 A missing poster, frayed at the edges, sits precariously stapled to a telephone pole.

“ ** _Larry Brooks, 46, last seen on 5 th November, please call—" _**

The bottom half of the poster is missing, the paper seemingly having been ripped in half. Aleks runs his finger along the fray. He runs his thumb over his finger, where the paper disturbed the skin. He huffs, disgusted.

“What’re you looking at?” Trevor calls over Aleks’ shoulder.

“Just this poster. Some guy went missing last week, but it looks like someone ripped off the number”.

“Wow. What a dickhead thing to do,” Trevor scoffs in reply.

Aleks raises his eyebrows, briefly, unsurprised. He gestures to Trevor, wordlessly, to walk with him. “In this town, nothing surprises me anymore”.

Trevor bumps his shoulder against Aleks and laughs, “Come on! At least you have me. It could be worse!”

Aleks raises an eyebrow, “I think it’s already worse.” He jokes, briefly, at Trevor’s expense, “Have you ever noticed how many Missing Persons’ Posters there are in this town?”

Trevor purses his lips and frowns, shaking his head. “Can’t say that I have, no”.

Aleks gestures an arm out and runs it along the length of the street. “Look, there’s a poster stapled to every other pole. Some of them have been there for ages.”

“Maybe they’ve been found, and the families have just forgotten to come and take them down?” Trevor offers, trying to be helpful.

Aleks shakes his head, “My dad would'a told me, besides, this guy”, Aleks starts, flicking his finger at the newest poster, “went missing 4 days ago. A, uh," he squints at the paper, "Larry Brooks. I’ve seen him around town before. And that one”, he gestures across the street to a poster beginning to yellow with age, “went missing in ’83. 3 years ago, Trevor”, Aleks swallows, “Danielle Estevez. She was only fourteen, and they still haven't found her”.

Worry sits just behind Trevor’s eyes and in the slight bags that hang beneath them. “I think you might be too hung up on this. What can you do about it?”, Trevor furrows his brows, “I’m sure the cops will find them, eventually”.

Aleks raises his eyebrows, briefly, in indignant disbelief, “yeah, I’m sure they will. They’ve been doing a bang-up job so far”.

Trevor claps a hand against Aleks shoulder, lightly pushing him ahead. “Come on, we’re going to be late for school. Senior year, baby!”.

* * *

 

 

The town is an old, industrial one. Founded in the mid 20’s by a string of emigration, the town was once booming. Now, it sits on the border of forgotten and lost, as if the line between those two things is thick enough to differentiate between them.

There’s not much there, nor has there even been, nor will there ever be.

It’s one of those towns where everyone knows everyone, and if asked to, Aleks could draw their family tree; but he doesn’t really know them. Not like he should, perhaps. Not like a small town like this advertises.

Aleks can honestly say he only really knows 5 people, or 5 people that behave more like 4.

Trevor is his best friend and has been since the first day of elementary school. Trevor was the first boy he met, and for a brief period, the first boy he wanted to kiss. But as his friendship with Trevor grew, the urge dissipated into just a funny, distant memory in the back of his brain.

Aleks wonders, sometimes, if he’d be able to survive without Trevor. If having Trevor by his side, consistently, for just over a decade has somehow hindered his ability to grow as an individual. If he’s so worried about being without him, how is he ever going to survive on his own? And if that is the case, well, so be it. Not a lot he can do about it now.

Asher and Jakob are, through their own regard, his other best friends. They were the first queer people he met in high school, and they’ve been together for as long as he’s known them. He wonders if, when the earth created itself some 13 billion years ago, if the stars had aligned themselves to make it happen. If they had sat high up in the sky, waiting for them to meet. Rejoicing when their plan fell into being. Crying with joy, perhaps.

They had been the people that helped him come to terms with his own sexuality. Helped him come to terms with his loving of boys, of men, of something not quite right. Of course, he knows it’s not wrong, or, he knows this now. But growing up, not so much. His father had other ideas. Other archaic ideas that didn't belong this close to a new millenia. 

They were a supposed niche group. You only ever knew of a queer person who just happened to be a friend of a friend of your aunt's gardner, and yet, here they are. Sons, and brothers, and fathers and daughters and sisters and mothers. 

Brett is a close friend, perhaps not best friend, but a close friend he’s helping pass biology.

The seat next to Brett in his first biology class had been left empty, and with no other empty seats in the room, Aleks had no choice but to take it. Aleks had, at first, been intimidated by Brett. By the sheer size of him. Despite only being 16, at the time, he was the size of a fully-grown power athlete. But through, and after, his first conversation with Brett, Aleks came to realise very quickly that he was the softest boy Aleks had ever met, and a certain attraction that had been bubbling in his stomach made itself known. Aleks had never acknowledged it, or rather, never acknowledged it out loud and he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, ever.

The boys didn’t see Brett very often. He split most of his time between the library and the wrestling gym. Aleks had gone to watch once, and only once. Watching a group of sweaty boys roll around on the floor was now left to the privacy of his own bedroom.

Lindsey is, not firstly nor lastly, his other close friend. They’d met each other after a teacher had picked on him in class and he’d clammed up, not being able to answer. She’d caught up to him after class and grilled him about his abilities, and after learning that English was perhaps not even his _second_ language, she decided she’d elect herself his English tutor and help his pass for senior year.

The boys often referred to her as the Mother Hen of the group, usually taking responsibility for anything stupid they’d planned, or were in the process, of doing.

Without her, Aleks doubted any of them would still be free men, or alive, for that matter.

* * *

 

 

Aleks can feel his eyes growing heavy, and the clock seems to move at half the pace it usually does, so he doesn’t bother to look at it again. The professor’s voice drones on, seeming further away than it actually is. Something about prefixes, or suffixes, or gerunds, or, whatever. He feels a sharp jab in his thigh, and turns his head to look at Lindsey, who’s saying something to him with a frown on her face. He can’t hear her, or rather his brain is too tired to process it, and he nods to placate her.

The bell trills, probably, 15 minutes later. Aleks holds his open rucksack at the edge of the table and unceremoniously brushes his things into the bag. The paper sits crumpled at the bottom and Lindsey huffs, perhaps regretting her offer, lamenting tutoring such insolence.

They wait for everyone else to leave the class, lest they get trampled in the doorway, and when the class is empty, they up and leave the classroom together, Lindsey somewhat further ahead in annoyance, and walk to the courtyard outside where everyone else is sat around a wooden picnic bench waiting for them.

Trevor greets Aleks first, as per, with a quick hug and a clap on the back. “Hey, guys. How was English?” he says to Aleks, but moreso directed at Lindsey.

Lindsey rolls her eyes and looks briefly at Aleks, not long enough to be caught but Aleks knows her well enough to know. “It was okay. Aleks fell asleep half way through, though, so not great for him. Guess you’ll just have to catch up later”, and she sends a wry smile his way when Aleks looks over. They’re good enough friends to know she doesn’t mean it.

“Ah, shit”, Jakob starts, “we were planning to go to the lake tonight.”

And reflexively, Aleks looks to Lindsey, as if asking for permission. As if she really is their mother. She tucks a hair behind her ear, resigned and holds her hands up in a shrug. “Go. I’ll write up some notes for you to revise off, but you better do it. If I found out you haven’t, I won’t be happy.”

He smiles apologetically in her direction.

“It is supposed to rain, though”, Brett announces as if the information wouldn’t have been more helpful to him 30 seconds prior.

“Oh, fuck. I don’t really feel like getting wet,” Aleks says and Asher, not really caring that he isn’t being spoken to, replies,

“I thought you liked getting wet”, a deviant gloss coating his eyes; smiling with his tongue between his teeth.

And Aleks stands with his mouth hanging open in disbelief that Asher would imply something so crude. Asher reaches across the space between them and pushes his bottom jaw up to close his mouth, “you’ll catch flies”, and Aleks swats his hand away in petty annoyance.

“Fuck you. Fine, I’m coming.” He squawks and gestures towards Brett. “Pick me up on your way there”.

“You have a car,” Brett argues, “why can’t you drive yourself?”

“Pick me up, idiots, or I won’t come”, he jokes. If Brett wants him to drive himself, then he will, but he’d rather not and if they want him to come with them so bad, they ought to carpool with him.

“Thought you liked coming?”

“Fuck off!”

* * *

 

 

It gets to 7pm and the heavens have opened. The rain falls like mortars, and big dark puddles drown the potholes in the road. Brett’s tire dips into one and splashes dirty water up the side of his truck. He curses under his breath, annoyed that he’ll have to clean it a second time in one year.

Aleks sits in the passenger seat, watching the rain droplets race down the window and trying to guess which one will win. Why on Earth they were out in this weather is beyond him, but it’s a bit too late to whine about it now. He could’ve said no.

The lake isn’t too far from any of their houses, and so has become a regular hangout. It, like most things in this town, is generally forgotten about so they can mess around out there in peace, with no one coming to disturb them. They’d most recently decided to build a small campfire to keep themselves warm if they decided to stay out there late, but it had unceremoniously disappeared only a week after they’d built it, so Aleks figures they’re not as alone as they think they are.

The rain calms down and stops before they get to the lake. When they arrive, there’s a car parked in the parking lot, it’s front tire flat, but when they get out, they can’t seem to see anyone. So, Asher, Jakob and Trevor wander off, laughing to themselves about something juvenile, Aleks imagines.

Brett pops the trunk and pulls out 4 sun-bleached deck chairs, as if they’re at the beach in the summer, and not at an abandoned lake after a torrential downpour.

Brett looks over and catches Aleks watching him, “I didn’t think you would want to come so I didn’t bother packing you one this morning”, as a way of explanation, or apology, but Aleks shrugs, not really bothered. “Would you give me a hand with them?” He says, passing two chairs for Aleks to carry.

Aleks notes how rusty the legs are. “How old are these?”, he asks, and Brett talks from inside the trunk so Aleks can only just hear him.

“20 years? I don’t know. They were my dad’s old fishing ones, but he doesn’t fish anymore so I asked if I could have them”.

“Your dad used to fish? I didn’t know that,” Aleks shouts to Brett, trying to make himself heard.

“Yeah!”, his voice is muffled by the body of the car, “he used to fish on this lake, actually. Which is kind of funny, now that we hang out here,” and Aleks chuckles, not really finding it funny but finding the situation needing one.

“Why’d he stop coming?”

And Brett gets out of the trunk then, a towel hanging over one arm and a cooler in the crook of the other. “Don’t know. Just came home one morning freaked out and never went back.”

Aleks hums in response, not really knowing what to say. His dad didn’t fish.

Brett gestures for Aleks to walk ahead. They put their stuff down where the scorched remnant of the campfire sits. Aleks sets the chairs down and unfolds them so they’re sat in a phantom campfire circle. Brett opens the cooler and offers Aleks a beer to which he denies.

“No, thanks. Lindsey’s mad enough as it is without me getting drunk to top it off”, and Brett chuckles.

“What, is she your mother?”

“She might as well be. She’s trying to help me pass English and I’m just fucking her around, basically”, and Brett shrugs.

“You’ll get there eventually. I got there with bio and I thought that was a lost cause”, and Aleks smiles, his chest fluttering.

 

Asher must have exceptional hearing, because he hears Brett crack open a can of beer and runs over to beg for one. Brett sits his down in the cup-holder of the chair and reaches down to pass two cans to Asher, knowing him to well. He thanks Brett and runs back over to Jakob and Trevor, skipping rocks, and offers the other one to Jakob, who thanks him with a chaste kiss on the mouth.

Brett and Aleks sit down in the deck chairs, Aleks’ slightly rocking on one side, not helped by the uneven floor of pebbles.

Trevor’s indignant “why didn’t you get me one?” echoes across the length of the lake, and far back, along by the trees that act as a canopy, bubbles float to the surface.

Trevor scuffs his feet along the pebbles as he comes over for his own beer, mock upset that Asher didn’t get him one, knowing full well that he wouldn’t. Brett reaches from his seat into the cooler to throw Trevor one, and it hits him square in the chest.

Aleks begins to say, “don’t open—” but the fizz of the liquid spilling over the side of the can interrupts him, “—it.”

“Brett!”, Trevor whines, “my shirt’s wet.”

“Did you bring an extra one?” Brett asks, not budging.

“No?”

Brett laughs, “then ya’ gotta deal with it, bud. You shouldn’t’ve opened the can if you didn’t want to get wet. Here”, he reaches to the floor for the towel, “use this to dry off” and throws it to Trevor. Trevor just catches it, and thanks him, not sure if he really means it. Considering it was Brett’s fault, anyway.

“Want to come skip rocks with us?” Trevor’s talking to Aleks now, and he’s extended a hand for Aleks to take.

Aleks squints up at Trevor, as if trying to protect his eyes from the sun, except that it’s 7pm and practically dusk. “I don’t know how to”, Aleks admits. It’s not like being taught how to skip rocks was ever something Aleks’ dad wanted to teach him.

“We’ll teach you! Come on!”, and he’s practically begging now, and Aleks is far too soft to say no. So, he says yes and takes Trevor’s hand to be lifted into a stand.

Trevor lets go and runs ahead, trying to get the best rocks to skip, leaving Aleks to walk behind him. Aleks watches the horizon, and watches bubbles float along the surface of the water. He bets Brett’s dad would know what kind of fish it was, if he asked.

“Hey, here’s a good one”, Jakob says when he gets there, passing Aleks a round, flat rock.

“Thank you,” Aleks says, taking it from him, and Jakob nods and turns away.

“Okay”, Trevor starts, “so, sort of like—half crouch, and bend your arm towards you. Now, you want to look along the water and, like, envision the rock jumping, and then when you’re ready, extend your arm and throw the rock like a frisbee, like this—”, Trevor throws the pebble, and it bounces along the water four times; sinking at the end of the line, “see? Easy! You try!”.

Aleks nods, it seems easy enough. Christ, it’s only skipping a rock.

He crouches, bends his arm, and looks along the water.

Envision the jump, envision the jump.

He watches the bubbles float towards them.

Envision the jump.

He extends his arm and throws the rock. He overshoots, and it flies sideways and hits Asher on the back of the arm.

He shouts in pain and grabs his arm.

“Oh shit—, I’m sorry. Fuck, I really didn’t mean to do that. I’m sorry”, and everyone is laughing, and Aleks only feels slightly less apologetic. What a shit shot.

“Okay, well”, Asher says, “we’re going to get out of the way”, and he reaches for Jakob’s hand and walks them away from the splash zone, and up the hill of pebbles over to Brett. Aleks watches them sit down on the chairs, and only then feels they’re a safe enough distance not to get hit.

“Do you want to try again?” Trevor asks, tentatively, like Aleks is a child. Like Aleks is this close to exploding. As if skipping rocks is hard.

“Yep, give me a rock”, Aleks demands and holds a hand out for Trevor to pass him a rock. He passes him a slightly bigger, slightly heavier one this time. He turns slightly to the left and faces the lake side on. He crouches, holds his arm against his body, and extends. The rock flies out of his hand, and jumps. And jumps, and jumps—

And Trevor grabs his arm and shakes it in excitement, “You’re doing it, you’re doing it—” he’s saying in Aleks’ ear, and Aleks is watching the rocks, and watching the bubbles, and _clunk—._

The rock hits something and sinks.

Aleks frowns, and raises himself up onto his toes to squint into the water, “did you see that?”

“Yeah”, Trevor nods in his periphery, “I did”.

The water gets darker, quickly. A circle of darkness expands around where the rock sunk, and it looks like—,

“Oh, fuck! Is that blood?” Trevor asks, mania sitting in his throat, “how is it blood? _How_ could it be blood? Why is there so _much_?” and he’s rambling to himself like a mad man, trying to convince himself that it’s just seaweed, or a dark spot, or _anything_ but blood.

Aleks watches the water move. The blood sits on the surface like oil; unmoving. He watches the spill part and a head break the surface. There’s something in the water watching him. Its hair sits, matted and sodden, along the water; blacker than night.

“Trevor”, he starts, not really wanting to go on, “there’s something in the water”.

He turns to look at Trevor, whose eyes are brimming with tears, his face white with fear. He talks slowly, as if talking loudly or quickly is going to alert the _thing_ in the water that they know it's there. “I’m not going to point, but there’s a head sticking out of the water. Where the rock stopped jumping, can you see it?” and Trevor nods, his eyes almost stuck. Almost like he can’t look away.

Trevor’s mouth opens, and he swallows, and he whispers, “I can see eyes, Aleks. The eyes are pitch fucking black”, his hands are shaking. “It’s watching us”.

“We should probably leave”, Aleks suggests but he’s already moving. He starts to walk towards Brett, but Trevor is still stood there, just shy of the water, watching this _thing_ watch him.

Aleks can feel himself going into a panic. “Trevor, come on!”, but Trevor stands, immovable. It’s like Trevor can’t even hear him. Aleks runs towards him, not really in the mood to dillydally, and grabs Trevor by the arm, yanking him up the hill towards Brett, the pebbles rolling down the hill at the force of his feet.

“Asher and Jakob, stop whatever gay shit you’re doing and get in the car, now. Brett, I need you to not ask questions. I just need you to get in the car and drive.”

“What—, what’s going on? What about our stuff? What about the chairs?” Brett’s doing nothing except asking questions, which is the opposite of what was asked of him.

Aleks lets go of Trevor’s arm and forces him into the car, just stopping himself of doing the seatbelt up for him. “Fuck the chairs, Brett!”, Aleks shouts, “They’re shitty, anyway! Get in the fucking car and drive now, so help me _God_! I’ll explain everything later,” and gets in the car. He slams the door behind him and gestures angrily from inside for Brett to hurry.

Brett gets in and starts the ignition. He reverses and then dry skids to turn the car around. The tires squeal when the car peels out of the parking lot, the driver’s door slamming itself closed on the acceleration.

It sits in the lake, watching them leave. It blows air out through its nose and sinks down back into the blackness, the bubbles billowing around it.

The bubbles sit on the surface briefly, watching dusk turn to night, before they pop.

The water sits silently.

 


	2. the tight grip and the sun lick

* * *

**M** **E** **T A N O** **I** **A**

 **_the tight grip, the sun lick_** ****

* * *

 

A body lay mottled under the pier. Bloated and green; it rolls up along the wood against the water. Its neck in ruins, the tongue hanging half-out along its throat. A hand clutching soil, fingernails black to the bone, floats on the surface. As if one last grab wasn’t enough, it lays under the pier as a gift; and a greeting. Eyes watch, from afar; standing sentry. Waiting for the gift to be collected, it waits for the boy.

Beneath the surface lies a monster. Something unimaginable, something loathsome, and something not quite _right_.

* * *

 

The oppressing dark watches him. It sits along the ceiling, and down the walls; the overwhelming blackness edges into the corners of his vision. He feels breathless. There’s a heavy weight sat on his chest, slowly crushing him, and his throat feels as if it’s swelled to the side of his neck. It smells like dirt, or soil, or a thick, dark mud he’s sunken down to the ankles into. The room feels humid.

Aleks bats his eyes open, barely, and can’t see anything. He can’t see shadows of furniture, or moonlight coming through the window. It’s like he’s staring into a black hole.

He kicks the duvet off his legs; sodden with sweat and swings his legs over the side of the bed. He moves to stand and steps straight into 6 inches of water. The water is freezing, and something soggy brushes against his foot. He yelps and steps backwards blindly, trying to get a foot onto the side of the bed so he can get out of the water. His foot slips, and he hits his back against the frame as he falls to the floor; water flying up around him at the force.

He screws his eyes up in pain, breathing through his teeth to stop himself from crying, or vomiting, and when he opens them, the water is gone. He’s sat on the floor; on an old dirty carpet, and moonlight is bathing the room in swaths of light.

He brings his hands to his face and rubs his eyes into his head. He run hands along his forehead and into his hair; standing in all directions from a fitful sleep. He turns his head, just, to look at the clock on the bedside table. It’s time for him to get up, so it doesn’t really matter that he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep anyway.

Head spinning, he cautiously makes his way down the stairs. His hand shakes against the handrail and an uneven rhythm beats down against it and echoes in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs.

He veers right and into the kitchen. A shadow looms in the doorway to the living room. His hand shakes as he feels along the wall for the light switch. He flicks his finger against it and the lightbulb explodes above his head. The noise startles him, and white dread sits hot against the back of his head. When he looks back to the doorway, the shadow is gone.

Where dawn gives him just enough light to meander without hitting any furniture, he cautiously makes his way over to the fridge; bare feet thudding against the linoleum. A magnet, with a picture of him at 10 years old, clings to a note from his father.

**_Doing the night beat. Don’t wait up for me. There’s money for lunch on the side._ **

Aleks stares down at the note, and resignation overwhelms him. He crumples the note in his hand and breathes a deep sigh to stop himself from getting upset.

They, his father and him, haven’t spoken properly for 7 years, or rather, since his mother’s disappearance. In some sick and twisted way, Aleks thinks that his father blames him for his mother’s disappearance, as if their relationship was anything but loving or, as if his mother would just up and leave, without telling either of them. Or without taking Aleks with her.

In the brief moments where Aleks and his father are in the house at the same time, the tension threatens to kill them both.

If Aleks’ father is in a good mood, he’ll nod a good morning to Aleks or a “ ** _hey, how’s school goin’?_** ” in a tone suggests that he’s not really that bothered anyway; never really listening to Aleks’ response, too busy cleaning his pistol or watching the game.

But, usually, it’s a cold and derisive stare from across the living room, or a tut when Aleks is in a good mood himself. Aleks wishes he could hate him. Wishes he could forget all about his father and skip town. But he can’t, or he won’t. He doesn’t really know.

* * *

 

 

 Aleks’ eyes grow heavy at the wheel of the car. As an abundantly stupid decision maker, he’d elected to drive to school, figuring the 25-minute walk too much in his state, and especially in torrential rain. He had forgotten to call Trevor and let him know that they wouldn’t be meeting up before school, and he hoped to God that Trevor wouldn’t be waiting for him in this weather, although he knows full well that Trevor will, as Trevor does.

Black smoke billows out of the exhaust, Aleks neglecting to take it to the mechanic. He’d been waiting for 3 weeks, until his pay check came in, to do it and the longer he waited, the black it got.

Aleks’ eyes flick up to the rear-view mirror, and through the smog, he finds himself being watched. There’s a boy in the road, stood dead still, staring at him. His hair is dark, and long, and the tangles hide his face. He’s stood there, arms to his side, leering at Aleks through his lashes. A car is speeding towards him, and Aleks is waiting for him to move, and waiting for him to get out of the way. The car isn’t braking, and the boy isn’t moving.

Aleks screams an almighty **_No!_** when the car seemingly collides with the boy, and Aleks can’t watch, and he absentmindedly fights with his own steering wheel to keep from crashing the car, or to give his brain something else to think about even if its not entirely there.

But, there’s no collision. There’s no scraping of metal, there’s no screaming, there’s no sickening thud.

A boy doesn’t get hit. Or rather, a boy was never there at all.

Aleks takes his eyes off the rear view and looks towards the front of car and realises suddenly, but not quickly, that his car is hurtling towards a group of kids.  

He slams on the breaks; launching himself forward into the steering wheel and grinding his sternum against his belt, to avoid hitting the school kids on the crossing. A teenager, probably no younger than he is, gestures an angry middle finger at him, and all Aleks can do is breathe a sigh of relief that he didn’t just witness a fatal accident, nor cause one.

But,

Why didn’t the boy move?

And why was he watching Aleks?

His hands are shaking against the wheel, and the wheel is gleaming with sweat, to the point of being slippery. Aleks realises, unglamorously, that he’s hyperventilating. His head is wet with perspiration, and he squints his eyes to stop the sweat from falling off his brow and into them.

The horn in the car behind him is booming, and Aleks looks to the rear view again, not hastily, to find an angry driver shaking their fist at him. Aleks watches the driver’s lips contort around the word **_move_** , and it seems like they’re moving in slow motion.

And a wave of nausea hits Aleks like a brick.

He pulls down the interior mirror on the sun-blinder to check himself over, and his eyes are black to the lashes. His eyes are pitch-fucking-black. They flick down to the steering wheel, and 6-inch talons eat through the leather. Dried blood cakes around his cuticles. He tries to scream, and his mouth hangs open in silence, a tantalising victory for a night terror.

Because that’s what this is. It’s a night terror. Aleks realises it, unceremoniously, because he’s been having them for the past week, and all the signs are there.

Blackness, beady eyes, and that fucking boy. Every time, it’s the same boy, and he’s always watching. He’s hasn’t taken his eyes off Aleks once.

When Aleks eventually convinces himself to open his eyes, he’s staring at the stains covering his bedroom ceiling. They’re a sickly, beige colour, and Aleks would prefer not to know what caused them.

There’s a stain that looks like a dog that he’d discovered that a few weeks after his mother’s disappearance, and it’d been the first thing to make him smile since. Since Aleks’ father had come home and tore the house apart looking for her. Aleks had hidden under his duvet, clutching a decade-old teddy his mother had gifted to him as an infant.

 _“It’s okay, Humphrey”_ , he’d whisper “ _There’s nothing to be afraid of_ ”, and Humphrey’s big button eyes would stare back; completely empty, and Aleks would beg God, foolishly, not to see malice in them. Beg to find comfort in nothing. He’d hold Humphrey a little tighter and bury his head in the fur atop his head.

Aleks is covered in a cold sweat, and he turns his head in the wet patch on his pillow to look at the clock on the bedside table. It’s 6am, on the dot. The angry, red numbers glare at him. He closes his eyes, briefly and runs his hands along the duvet. The bile sitting in his stomach threatens to fly towards his throat when he reaches his crotch. There’s a familiar hill, holding the duvet up.

Aleks throws the duvet off, and races into the bathroom. He steps into the shower and turns the tap, not finding it in himself to care that the water is scalding where it hasn’t adjusted to the morning. He lets the water burn red on his chest and brace a hand against the tile.

He traces the other hand down his chest, his abdomen, his hips and takes his cock in his hand. He takes it at the base and runs a slow hand along the shaft.

Long, dark hair; matted at the root.

His strokes get faster, and his hips are jutting against the push and pull, and he fights damned hard to think about anything other than the boy. To think about Brett, and his strong muscles, and his thick thighs, and the things that he could do to Aleks.

But he can’t.

Black eyes; glistening as they watch him.

He moans, a **_please_** stuttering out of his mouth against angry, gritted teeth. He reaches the head of his dick, and moves a thumb teasingly along the slit, and there he is. The boy, his face contorted in an ugly grin, teeth as sharp as nails, and he’s talking to Aleks, but Aleks can’t hear him. Aleks can barely fucking stand, the _slick_ echoing around the room.

Aleks is pleading now; tears in his eyes, a chorus of **_who are you?_** and **_what do you want?_**

And the boy, he smiles, just, and whispers, faraway and distorted, and not quite _there_ , “ **you** ”.

And Aleks’ back arches, his hips leaning forward into his hand, and he finishes against the tiles, stamping down a moan sitting in his throat. His cum slides down the tiles in a thick, white glob, and splats against the ceramic of the shower floor.

The bile raises up into his throat now, and the saliva retreats in his mouth like the impending doom of a tsunami, and Aleks bends over and vomits. It’s not a lot, or barely any, since he hasn’t eaten a proper meal in days, but it exhausts him. He reaches blindly for the edge of the tub for something to lean on, and sits down, resting his head against the tile. He watches the water wash the bile and cum down the drain, and wishes he was small enough to be washed away too.

* * *

 

 

He arrives late to school, too scared from his night terror to drive. Too scared that if he looks in the rear-view mirror, he’s gonna see something he doesn’t want to. His dad’s note sits crumpled and heavy in his coat pocket because the night terrors always get something right, otherwise they wouldn’t be terrors.

The group are waiting for him, leaning up against a row of lockers; enthralled in idle chatter. Lindsey’s holding a stack of books almost as tall as she is, Jakob is leaning with one arm against the lockers with Asher nuzzled in the space between them and Brett and Trevor are laughing about something unbeknownst to Aleks, because it always is.

Watching them, and feeling the dread he feels unbeknownst to _them_ , he’s never felt more alone.

He walks towards them slowly, feeling weary and wary of missing a beat and tripping over a loose tile. Trevor sees him first, as is par for the course, and worry paints his face. He races towards Aleks, muttering at him, and asking if he’s okay but Aleks can’t really hear him. He’s too busy focussing on not falling over.

Trevor walks him to the group, a hand under his arm like he’s a fucking geriatric trying to cross the road, and everyone’s watching him with guilty faces like perhaps they shouldn’t be.

“Hey, man”, Brett greets first with a look in his eye like he knows full well that Aleks wanted him to be the first to say something, and the bile wriggles in his tummy like it has a mind of its own, “you look like shit, are you okay?”

Aleks shrugs, not entirely sure if he can trust his mouth at the moment. Vomit threatens to rear its ugly head.

“You look like you haven’t slept in days”, Asher adds, half hiding behind Jakob’s body as if Aleks will lash out at him. Aleks wonders what they’ve been talking about for all of them to be walking on egg shells like this.

“Yeah”, Aleks nods, refusing to make eye contact with any of them, “I haven’t. Been having weird dreams, or nightmares, or whatever. I woke up this morning, and my room was filling up with water, and then I blinked, and it was gone. Or at least, I thought I woke up, but I was still asleep, apparently”, and then nobody speaks. Aleks waits for a response and doesn’t get one, and silence sits between them, and it weighs a tonne.

Trevor squeezes through the group to his locker and slams the door open to create some noise, which, sort of, kickstarts them back into conversation, and Trevor side-eyes Aleks over his shoulder, a kind smile on his face. He reaches in to grab his Math textbook, and a smell wafts out of the locker that makes Aleks’ eyes water.

“Holy fuck, Trevor. That smells _awful_. Did you leave food in there over Halloween, or something?” and once again, Aleks is met with the 5 pairs of eyes, that feel like thousands, watching him; uneasy.

“Uh”, Trevor starts, “What are you talking about?”

And Aleks is more cautious with his words now. “Can’t you smell that? It smells like death—, like decay. Can’t you smell it?”, and he’s starting to panic, and five heads shake in response, like Cerberus guarding the gate to Hell.

**No, you can’t come in. No, we don’t want you here.**

“There’s no smell, Aleks”, Lindsey stage-whispers, some maternal part of her brain kicking in. Like she’s trying to end this tangent before Aleks hurts or embarrasses himself.

And Aleks vision goes stark-white, and his eyes burn like; Cerberus let him in, and he’s staring directly into the blaze.

He feels a warm, calloused hand grab his bicep, trying to keep him upright, before he plummets to the concrete. A faraway shout is the last thing he hears before his eyes go black.

The boy is the last thing he sees.

* * *

 

He wakes up in the nurse’s office.

An older lady is leaning over him, wearing a navy pinafore with a watch clipped to her breast pocket. It ticks far too loudly for such a small watch. Her name badge, ironed onto the opposite breast, reads: **_Patricia_.** Her perfume reminds him of his mother. She breaths through her mouth onto his face and it smells like peppermint. Aleks breaths a long sigh through his nose, calm for the first time in a while.

She notices he’s awake, and jolts into action.

“Mornin’ sweetheart—”, she starts, jovial. “Your lovely friends brought you here, sayin’ you fainted?”, and she’s asking a question she already knows the answer to, but Aleks gives her the satisfaction of a nod anyway. “How you feelin’ now?”

And Aleks can’t really tell. He’s got what feels like the remnants of a migraine, and he feels parched, but he figures she’s looking for something vague, so she can tick her checklist and send him on his way.

He clears his throat and says, “I feel fine, I think. Just have a bit of a headache”, and she puts a hand to his head, like a doting mother trying to rid a fever.

“Do you mind if I take your temperature, honey?”, and Aleks nods, “Okay. Open your mouth and lift your tongue. I’m going to put the thermometer in, and when its in, you need to lower your tongue, okay?” and Aleks nods, again, and opens his mouth.

Patricia puts the thermometer in his mouth and waits. She taps her foot against the linoleum of the nurse’s office and Aleks wonders why they chose that flooring, and figures perhaps he’d rather not know.

“Okay,” she says and Aleks lifts his tongue for her to take the thermometer out. “37°C, you’re right as rain!”, she exclaims, her smile wide on her face. “I’m goin’ to let you leave now, but if you start to feel woozy, or not quite right, you come see me, ya hear?”, and it’s more of a demand than a question. Aleks agrees and swings his legs over the edge of the bed to hop down.

He makes for the door, but she stops him.

“Aleks— “, she starts, and Aleks looks over to meet her eyes, “you got some good friends, you know that? I practically had to shepherd ‘em out of here. They were adamant on lookin’ after you. Make sure you remember that.”

Aleks nods, again, like the fucking dogs they put on trunks of cars. “Thanks, Patricia.”

“Oh, you doll. You can call me Patty.” She smiles wide, again. “Hope I don’t catch ya’ in here, again”, and Aleks waves a goodbye over his shoulder, not wanting her to see the tears in his eyes.

Far too much like his mother for his own good.

* * *

 

Saturday morning comes quickly. After another fitful night’s sleep, Aleks can’t wait to be given something else to think about.

Saturday’s are coffee mornings for Trevor and Aleks. There’s a niche, cosy coffee spot in the centre of town that they’d elected to start going to a few years ago to spend _quality_ best-friend time together. Like the name suggests, it was _supposed_ to be coffee mornings, but they both realised, rather quickly, that getting up before 11am was a no-go, so now it’s like coffee brunch without the food.

Aleks walks in, the bell jingling over his head, and veers right to their favourite spot; a corner booth fit for two with a window view. He usually arrives anywhere between 10 to 30 minutes earlier than Trevor, with Trevor usually falling through the door looking like he rushed to get dressed.

He takes a seat and positions a pillow behind his back, so he can lean back a little without fully reclining. He shoots a smile to the barista, a cute 20-something year old that Aleks has had a crush on for, well, the entire time they’ve been coming. His name is Mark, or at least that’s what the tag says. He daren’t speak to him, though; only admire from afar.

The bell jingles, and Aleks watches Mark smile towards the door so he figures it must be Trevor. He hears him breathing, heavily, before he sees him. Trevor veers around the corner, cheeks flushed red, and with a lopsided grin on his face. Aleks stands to greet him and kisses his cheek to say hello.

Aleks gestures for Trevor to sit opposite him and raises two fingers to Mark, asking for 2 of their regulars. Mark shoots Aleks a coy grin and turns to the coffee machine. Aleks looks back towards Trevor and grins.

“Morning, bud. 30 minutes early. For you, at least” and Trevor nods, ecstatic.

“I know, I can’t believe it. I did have to run—”

“I can tell”.

“—But I made it, actually on time!” and he’s beaming ear-to-ear.

“Have you eaten?”, Aleks asks, now the doting mother, and Trevor nods.

“Yep! Had scrambled egg, pretty yummy. A little on the squeaky side, but whatever. Have you?”, and he talks like he’s 10 years younger than he is. He’s shaking in his chair like he’s going to explode from all the energy he has.

Aleks nods, even though he hasn’t eaten. He doesn’t need Trevor worrying. He’ll eat later. “Okay, well I ordered two hot chocolates, so you better have room in there for that”, and Trevor makes a face, like Aleks is stupid for even _suggesting_ that Trevor’s full enough to not enjoy hot chocolate.

“Did you get marshmallows?”, and Aleks nods.

“Don’t I always?”

Mark calls their names from the counter and Aleks gets up to get it. Mark smiles, tongue between his teeth, as Aleks takes the drinks from him. He slides the bill to Aleks, his number printed neatly at the bottom, and Aleks offers a shy smile, folding up the paper and putting it in his coat pocket.

He brings them back to the table. His hands jitter, and he watches the liquid slosh over the lip of the mug and onto the saucer. He takes the one that spilled the most, to be selfless but also to stop Trevor asking questions.

“So, Mom was at work last night; she was on the night shift again, which is pretty sucky because I never see her anymore—”, and Aleks lets Trevor babble, like this is a well-rehearsed pantomime. Because this is what coffee “mornings” are, a chance for Trevor to ramble nonsensically and a chance for Aleks to people watch instead, and only pretend he’s listening, tuning in and out whenever he hears a buzzword, like Trevor’s trying to interest him in conversation.

“Like, why does she keep taking the night shift? I know it’s better money, but she’s got kids to look after, and it’s not like Dad’s got the time either”—, and Aleks sees him. A figure out of the corner of his eye. He’s standing across the street, outside a liquor store, and he’s watching Aleks.

He daren’t look, not now, although he figures the boy knows he’s sort of looking, even if it’s only out of his peripheral.

“Trevor— “, and like the angel he is, Trevor stops rambling in his tracks, knowing full well that Aleks wasn’t listening anyway, but being polite enough to listen when Aleks wants to talk.

“Yeah? What is it?”, eyes wide.

“You see that guy out there, across the street?”, Aleks asks, gesturing with his eyes, “do you recognise him?” and Trevor shakes his head, and the bile grins like the monster it is. “You haven’t seen him at school or anything?” and Trevor shakes his head again.

“Uh, nope. Not sure I’d remember if I did, anyway. Why?” and Aleks shakes his head, and Trevor doesn’t dig, because Trevor never does, and Aleks figures that Trevor can see the mania in his eyes, threatening to lunge at any second.

“Anyway”, Aleks changes the subject, not wanting to talk about things he doesn’t understand anymore, “what were you saying?”

“Oh, yeah!”, and Trevor sits forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands, “Mom was at work, and it was like, 2am, and the sheriff came in—, and your dad was there—“, and Aleks is listening now, “and she said they brought this body in. Wheeled it in on a gurney, and she said it was mangled to shit. Practically indistinguishable”, and Aleks turns his head to the boy.

And the boy’s mouth ticks up on one side.

“She said they think it was an animal, but she’s not sure”.

“Do they know who it was?”

And Trevor shakes his head, “she says no, but I don’t think she’d tell me anyway”, and Aleks tips his head down, chin to chest. “They’re calling in people to see if they can identify it, but with how she described it, I don’t think they have much luck”, and a drop of sweat drips down Aleks’ neck and soaks into the collar of his shirt.

“I have to go”, Aleks announces, voice shaking in his throat, “Are you going to be okay here by yourself?” and Trevor frowns, but nods anyway.

“Are you okay?”

And Aleks nods, practically jolting out of his chair, and hits his knee against the corner of the table, sloshing his own hot chocolate further over the lip of the cup, and now onto the table. It steams against the wood. Mark ought to wipe it up, otherwise it’ll stain.

He offers Trevor a pat on the shoulder, waves a hasty goodbye to Mark, and pulls the door open. It hits against the back of the frame, and the bell jingles loudly above his head.

* * *

 

 

ABC News blares from the television set in the living room. His dad lay resting on the couch, his police uniform draped over the back. Aleks closes the door quietly, not wanting to wake his dad if he’s asleep, and he reaches into his pocket for the door key to lock it. He catches his finger on the coffee shop receipt and he pulls his hand out of his pocket to see blood pooling on his finger tip. He puts his finger to his mouth and sucks it clean, the taste of iron sitting on the back of his tongue.

He stands in the vestibule, or just outside it, hesitating to go into the main part of the house. He doesn’t really want to talk to his father, especially after the shift he had. Especially after the shit he supposedly saw last night.

“Aleksandr?”, his father calls, his speech muffled by the cigarette sitting against his lip; smoke swelling out of his mouth like a chimney, “is that you?” and Aleks takes a step forward, the floorboard creaking under his boots. His father turns his head and greets Aleks with a nod of his head.

“Hey”, Aleks greets, voice feeling raw, “what’s up?”

And Aleks’ father chuckles humourlessly, “Nothing much. Just resting up before my shift tonight”, and Aleks’ body swells with rage.

“What time did you finish this morning?”

“7-ish. Some time around there”, his father shrugs.

“And they want you to work tonight as well? That’s fucking bullshit”, and he stamps his feet like a petulant child, the strain of whatever the fuck is going on getting to him.

“Gotta make money, son. Not like you’re doin’ it”, and Aleks deflates, as it usually goes in conversations with his father.

“I’m going to my room”, he announces, “let me know when you’re leaving”, and he takes the first step on the stairs, mud from his boots coating the carpet. He only just hears his father’s voice over the set.

“Did ya hear that lady’s missing?”

And Aleks stops, and tilts his head slightly, brows furrowed, as if he can’t really hear his dad, and as if tilting his head will help him understand. He takes a step back down, levelling himself on the hallway; stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up into blackness. “What lady?”

“Lady at your school. That nurse? Just saw an appeal on her. Probably the same sick fuck that took your ma’”, and Aleks braces his hands against his knees, suddenly feeling lightheaded. His pulse is beating loudly in his ears, and things start to sway in his vision.

He looks up through his lashes to the stairs, where the boy is sat. He stinks; like salt and mud and _wet._

He offers a smile and outstretches a hand. Aleks reaches out to touch him, and their fingers graze against each other, and his hand is ice cold. Aleks pulls his hand away and looks down to his fingers, where a coat of slime sits between them like webbing.

He looks back to the boy.

Only the boy is gone, and a wet patch is left on the stairs where he was sat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took 3 weeks. I'm very bad with updating fics so I'm quite surprised it wasn't longer. I'd like to actually finish this one so in an ideal world, I'd have a regular uploading schedule but we'll see. 
> 
> Unbeta'd, so let me know if there's any mistakes. Leave a comment if you'd like, reading your feedback is nice.
> 
> Chapter title is from White Fire by Angel Olsen.
> 
> Catch me over at mightydogfood on Tumblr if you feel like it.


	3. like a lamb

* * *

  **M** **E** **T A N O** **I** **A**

**_like a lamb_ **

* * *

****

The body bobs on the water; a melting marshmallow swimming on the surface of a hot chocolate. The sickly-sweet smell of rot sits along the bank, like it has done many times before. The body lays face down; its once-beige slacks clinging to the back of its legs. A webbing of blue and yellow paint its back.

The body bumps against the pier. A slow bass drum in an intro song.

 

* * *

 

Compulsion is a strange thing.

Aleks stirs, no later than 1am, to an ache in the back of his head. He’d gone to sleep with a faraway dullness and had awoken to it pulsing. He grits his teeth in a vain attempt to deal with it, but it only makes it worse. He feels breathless, like he’s drowning.

He feels an itch. An insatiable itch over his whole body. He feels a pull. It wants to drag him out of bed. It wants him down the stairs. It wants him to _move._ He supposes in a matter of necessity, in quelling the pull, he’ll give it what it wants.

He shuffles his duvet down his legs, and bunches it at the bottom of the bed. It smells musty, the familiar smell of teenage hormones left to dry. Aleks reaches, his hand shaking, for his boxers and jolts away in shame, like he’s been burnt, when his fingers touch a wet patch. A wet patch that has become all too familiar over the last month.

He stands up, legs feeling like jelly, and pulls his boxers down to his ankles. He kicks them off, picks them up off the floor, and stuffs them in the hamper as far down as they’ll go. Like he needs his father knowing about his wet dreams. Like he needs his father asking about _girls_.

He walks towards his wardrobe, moonlight leading the way across the minefield, and grabs the first pair of trousers he can find. They’re old, tattered and ill-fitting. He pulls them up and grimaces when the denim brushes against his sensitive head. He pulls his favourite jumper out of his wardrobe next; it’s a dirty yellow and knitted, a birthday gift from his mother. The hanger that it came from swings, to-and-fro, in its absence.

He pulls it on over his head. His hair sits flat against his forehead. He hopes he’ll be warm enough, but if he isn’t, so be it. Compulsion doesn’t care.

He makes his way downstairs to see his father asleep with his head hanging off the back of the couch, a burnt-out cigarette hanging limply from between his teeth. Aleks shakes his head in dismay, surprised the house hasn’t set ablaze yet. He walks towards the kitchen and jimmies open a rarely used drawer. It holds many knick-knacks and trinkets, one very important knick-knack being the keys to his father’s old Mustang. His, used-to-be, pride and joy. It’s been sat in front of the house since his mother’s disappearance, and Aleks doubts that his father will ever use at it again.

The backseat holding too many fruitful memories for his father to bare to look at. Too many late nights in school car parks, burning hands trailing over eager skin. No, Aleks doubts it’ll be used again.

Aleks grabs his boots from the backdoor and slides them on. They feel damp and Aleks can’t work out if they’re wet, or just cold. He walks across the house and leaves through the front door, closing it quietly behind him. He watches his reflection in the car door. In a rather unsettling conclusion, he realises that he barely recognises himself. His once youthful face turned 20 years older in the moonlight. His forehead holding wrinkles he didn’t have last week. His face dragging with stress.

He swings the car door open and gets into the car. When he closes the door, he tries not to slam, but his jittery fingers lose grip of the handle and it slams closed anyway.

When he turns the key and starts the ignition, the car judders, like it hasn’t felt the warmth of a human in so long, it has no idea what to do with it. The headlights flicker to life. He puts the car in gear and moves off, neglecting to put on a seat belt.

The drive to the lake should take a half hour, or perhaps 45 in bad weather, but Aleks has the pedal to the floor; the back wheels just shy of spinning out, kicking up dust from a road rarely visited, and makes it in 20.

He turns into the lake. He pulls in slowly and parks across three bays, or what used to be bays, not really giving a fuck about parking etiquette. It is abandoned, after all. Everyone else at home and safe in their beds. Not being haunted by, whatever. Whatever it is. Whatever it wants.

He turns the key and switches the car off. He watches the water from behind the windshield, squinting against the darkness.

And there.

A disturbance; a head breaks the surface. He’s seen this in a dream. A sick sense of Deja-vu envelops him, like a humid day in the summer; like he’s stripped to the bone but can’t seem to cool down.

The pull asks him out of the car.

He moves slowly, his fingers a vice-grip on the handle. Something opens the car. Something, but not him.

Compulsion is dangerous. What would it ask of him next?

The angel begs him to leave, the devil tells him to take a step closer. His body is treacherous, and he moves.

It speaks. Whatever _it_ is, it’s too far away for Aleks to hear what it said. Aleks wishes he was frozen in shock because, perhaps if he had been, he wouldn’t have taken a step closer to the water. The pebbles under his feet falter, and his arms fly out to his sides to balance him. It smiles, and the bubbles around it float to the surface, like the water is laughing at him too.

He steadies himself, his feet buried in the stones, and it stares. Aleks feels stripped raw, inhuman. Like his body isn’t his, like he’s sat above himself, watching like an audience in an opera house waiting for the climax; wide eyes leaning forward in their seats like they’d rather fall out and over the rail than miss the final note.

The water sits undisturbed despite the disturbance in it. 

“Why am I here?” Aleks whispers, his throat catching on the last word. Aleks feels flustered, and angry that he’s flustered. His body thrums with rage.

“ _Why_ are _you here_?” It responds, voice gravelly, and smooth at the same time. Languid, calm. The hair on Aleks’ neck stands tall, and he suppresses a shiver of dread, or at least he hopes. It’s 50 feet away, so why does it sound like it’s stood right behind Aleks? Like its talking right into his ear.

He supposes the jumper wasn’t enough to keep him warm, because he’s shivering. His teeth are chattering with such force, he’s afraid they’re going to fall out of his head.

“ _Are you cold?”_ It asks, again, voice warm. Aleks shakes, with both chill and fury.

“Why did you bring me here?” He asks, exhaustion an abusive grip around his neck.

“ _Did I bring you here? Or did you bring you here?”_ It teases, a deviant smirk sat across its cheeks. Aleks feels rage swell like an ever-expanding balloon. It doesn’t pop, it doesn’t pop. He sees red, but his body won’t move.

“Tell me”, he grits his teeth, “what the fuck you want with me”. It’s an order, not a question. Aleks is sick and fucking tired of this.

And then, like the angel sat atop his shoulder whispers—

**_Over there. Look._ **

And Aleks looks. Just quickly. A spot of white colours his vision. Something is under the pier. It floats, brushing the bank every other wave.

The balloon pops.

Aleks moves his feet out from under the pebbles, a trickle of stones fall and land in a heap, and marches over to the pier. He braces himself on it and reaches under to grab for it. He stands up and looks at the item in his hands. It’s an old baseball cap, misshapen from the water. It’s an off white and bears the insignia of some kind of fish on its front. Water drips from the brim and soaks across the top of Aleks’ boots. He thanks himself lucky that he didn’t wear sneakers.

Aleks wrings it out, hitting it against his thigh a few times to dry it out. The air around him seems close, and muggy. Sweat forms along his hair line, and he uses his sleeve to wipe it away.

He turns on his heel and heads back towards the car. His hand reaches for the door, and his fingers freeze.

“ _Don’t_ ”, it orders. Or pleads.

“Why not?” Aleks asks, not facing the water. He watches his reflection in the window, too petrified to look anywhere else. He watches fear creep onto his face, his jowls hanging like the fear has aged him another 20 years. Like he’s a haggard old man, haunted by a ghost in his own head. He can go nowhere without it.

It doesn’t answer. Aleks’ fingers bend at the knuckles, and blood flows like white water. He takes the reprieve as a sign and wrenches the door open. He throws the hat onto the passenger seat and gets in the car. When he looks to the water, it’s flat.

Verklempt sits in Aleks throat. He doesn’t understand why.

* * *

 

 

Autumn's curtain closes, and leaves the stage open for winter to slink its way in. Aleks’ hugs a knitted jumper in his fists in naïve effort to keep himself warm on the walk to the coffee shop. His winter coat, undone at the waist, flaps against his legs in the wind. He left his scarf and gloves on the microwave and wasn’t willing to walk dirty boots through the house to go get them. Cold be damned, at least he’s not doing chores.

He knows he’s late. He knows better than to let Trevor arrive before him, knows better than to leave Trevor waiting for him, knows he’ll never hear the last of it.

He rounds a corner quickly, and slips on the ice forming on the sidewalk, very nearly falling flat on his ass. A hand under his armpit keeps him upright, but when he looks over to say thank you, there’s no one there. Aleks feels that familiar panic ebbing along the back of his neck and decides to ignore it. Just for now. Just for Saturday Coffee Time. Can’t he have a minute’s rest?  

He pushes the coffee shop’s door open, the bell jingling over his head, and takes note of two things. One: Mark, the barista, isn’t there to greet him, and two: Trevor isn’t alone. He turns and walks towards the booth, sliding in next to Asher. He takes one look and thinks it’d be better not to mention the fact that it’s supposed to be just Trevor and him, considering the look on Asher’s face. The skin around his eyes is blotchy, and his nose is red and swollen. Aleks raises an eyebrow in Trevor’s direction, who only challenges the look with two raised eyebrows, disappointment sitting heavy in his features.

“You’re late”, he announces, in supposed lieu of a greeting.

Aleks scoffs rudely. “As if you’re ever on time”.

“You’ve come to expect my lateness, Aleksandr”, he says matter of fact, mirth brewing in his eyes, “but you? This is—, well, I’m speechless. What would our dear Mark think?”

“Well, I’m sure he’d have something more constructive to say”, Aleks grins, “speaking of, where is he?”

Trevor shrugs. “Fuck knows. Wasn’t here when we got here”, he replies, gesturing with his brows to Asher. “We’ve been here for, like, 15 minutes?”, and Asher nods, “He hasn’t left or showed up in that time”, he checks the watch on his wrist, “this is his shift, right?”

Aleks raises his eyebrows. “What, you got his schedule memorised? He your boyfriend, or something?” But the friendly banter is cut short by a loud and dramatic sniffle to Aleks’ right. He watches Asher rub his nose in his periphery, and frowns in concern.

“Hey, man”, he says, lightly nudging Asher with his shoulder, “are you alright?”. He watches Asher’s lip tremble and wishes he hadn’t said anything. He looks to Trevor helplessly as Asher sinks further into his seat, tears spilling down his cheeks.

“Him and Jakob are having a tiff”, Trevor says, tiredly. “I’ve been hearing about it for the last 3 hours, and as much as I love them both, I’ve about had it. So, if you wanna take over, I’m gonna try and charm our more appropriately sexually aligned barista”. He smiles, cheekily, the action digging into his cheek like he’s a 12-year-old about to do something he shouldn’t.

Aleks rolls his eyes and shucks off his winter coat, starting to get a little too warm for his liking. He rolls his jumper sleeves up, so they don’t dangle over his hands and folds his arms over his chest, leaning back against the seat to try and make Asher feel more comfortable, as he obviously isn’t feeling particularly comfort-inclined right now.

“So”, he starts, “what happened?”. No holds barred.

Asher’s breath comes out in small increments, like he’s afraid if he breathes out fully then everything is going to come out in one fell swoop, and he has an iota more control than that, or at least the semblance of more control. “I—”, he starts, and exhales slowly, “I don’t—, uh, I don’t think Jakob loves me, anymore. Or ever did. Or—, I don’t know”.

“What?” Aleks sputters, astounded that the idiot would say such a thing, “why the fuck would you think that? Haven’t you been together since, like, the Big Bang?”

Asher huffs a laugh, despite himself. “Sure feels like it, sometimes”, and he talks as if he’s a marred old woman, talking of her military husband who just doesn’t have the love for her he had before the war. “He just doesn’t want to fuck anymore, it seems like. We haven’t fucked in a while. Well”, he huffs again, humourlessly this time, “13 days to be exact, and—is that a dry spell? How many days is considered a dry spell? Whatever, nearly two weeks. Two weeks! Do you know what that feels like? I’ve had to sneak into the bathroom like three times a day—”

Aleks holds a hand up, hoping that Asher will stop for just one second. He feels as if his brain might’ve shut off in the middle of Asher’s rant to protect itself, because he can’t recall much of what was said. He goes for the easy response, not really knowing what else to say. Not really having the experience to offer anything besides, “have you spoken to him? Communication is important, y’know?”

“Yeah”, he smiles, sadly, “that’s what Trevor said. Well, with a few more fucks thrown in the longer the conversation went on for”, he smiles for real this time. Lovingly, Aleks’ supposes, and it strikes him how lucky he is to have a friend like Asher. A friend who can love so unconditionally, and Aleks feels a strong urge to protect him.

“Any guy’d be lucky to have ya, and I’ll kick Jakob’s ass if he disagrees with me”, and Asher laughs, wetly, eyes glassy with unfallen tears.

“Three hot chocolates, piping hot and coming through!” Trevor announces, placing a round tray on which rests three large hot chocolates, one with marshmallows, onto the table. He hands a napkin to Aleks and Asher before taking one for himself and tucking it into his collar, raising his eyebrows in a challenge when Aleks shoots him a look. “This is a new shirt, I’m not ruining it with chocolatey deliciousness, okay?”

Aleks holds both his hands up in surrender, not willing to have an argument over the semantics of when you should and when you should not tuck a napkin into the collar of your shirt. He can’t be bothered, and besides, he’ll lose anyway. He always does. Trevor’s the little sibling you always let win lest you want a tantrum of epic proportions. It just ain’t worth it.

“You feelin’ okay, now?” Trevor asks in Asher’s direction, not really willing to take no for an answer after his whirlwind of a morning with Bette fucking Davis. Asher nods and Trevor smiles wide, despite himself. “Good, glad to hear it. And now”, he gestures to Aleks, “my next appointment. Aleksandr Marchant, how have you been since our last session?”

Aleks very narrowly misses when he throws his soiled napkin in Trevor’s general vicinity. “Shaddap, ya fucking mook. Who do you think you are?” and Trevor shrugs, falling back against the reclining booth like the spoilt brat he is.

“Well, you ran outta here like a spooked colt last week. I’m not stupid for askin’”, and Aleks feels guilty for lashing out, even if he was only partially serious. He briefly considers mentioning The Incident from earlier in the week, but figures Trevor and Asher have both got enough of their plates to feed them for a lifetime. It wouldn’t be fair to load them up higher. Besides, a sick and childish side of him almost doesn’t want to share. He wants the trauma all to himself.

“I’ve been fine, if you must know”, he offers, his tone suggesting that he’s not willing to elaborate.

Trevor lifts the corner of his mouth in slight disappointment, not wanting to push Aleks. “You sure? I charge way less than your average therapist, and I don’t take August off.”

Aleks guffaws, “Bullshit you don’t take August off! As if your ma hasn’t got you scrubbing the floors all summer, so she can go get her nails done at the salon.”

“She got you working Christmas to?” Asher chips in, finally. The warmth sits heavy in his voice and Aleks feels his mood lift at the development.

“Nah, man. We’re devout Catholics.”

“Sanctimonious, you mean”, and Trevor swats him across the table.

“Ey! Just because you haven’t found the Lord.”

“Yeah, I’m sure the Lord’ll be real happy that I’m taking it up the ass”, and Asher chimes in with a “make that two of us!”

“Anyway!”, Trevor begins again, loud enough to drown out both Aleks and Asher, “we spend most of our time in the church over Christmas, so I haven’t got to get my hands dirty once.”

“Bet you’re the only one who won’t.”

“Fuck off”.

“Yeah, bet you’re the only heterosexual in the place.”

“I said, fuck off, the both of you!”

* * *

 

 

The hat is sat on a chair in the corner of his room. It’s sodden, still, and staining a patch into the upholstery. Aleks has no idea how long it’d been sat in the lake, collecting water and dirt. He watches it from his bed, just in case it tries anything. Who knows these days, maybe there’s sentient headwear wandering around? Maybe said headwear is in Aleks’ possession now and its going to try and suffocate him in his sleep. Good fucking luck, hat. It’s Sleep with One Eye Open from here on out.

As if sleep is happening at all, anymore.

He considers telling someone. Telling someone what, he doesn’t know. Hey, Trevor, I found a hat in the lake. Hey, Asher, I found a hat and I think it’s suspicious. Hey, Lindsay, I found a hat and I think it belongs to the missing fisherman, and no, I haven’t done my Lit homework yet. I’m a little busy, can’t you see?

He feels like he’s losing it. He feels like he’s spilled the whole bag of fucking marbles and he’s fumbling all over the floor trying to stop them from rolling away. Maybe he had no marbles to begin with. Maybe he should stop talking in stupid, cliché metaphors and just accept the fact that something is not quite right. Maybe it’s him that’s not quite right, or maybe it’s something else. But it’s _something_. And it’s not fair to make him go through it alone.

He leans over, cautiously, his eyes still trained on the hat, and reaches for the landline sitting heavy on his bedside table. He picks up the receiver, the dial tone ringing loudly in his ear. Thank fuck he doesn’t have tinnitus, or this’d really be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

He dials, and he waits. Someone picks up the other line, the plastic fumbling as Asher, presumably tries to bring the receiver to his ear. There’s a lot of ruckus going on and Aleks can’t really make heads or tails of it. Until he can.

“H—, hello?” Asher says, breathily, air stuttering around the greeting.

“Um—, hello. It’s me. Are you free?” He asks, knowing full-well that the answer is obviously no, the tell-tale sound of the headboard hitting the wall in a savage rhythm.

“Yeah, what’s—, don’t—, baby, keep goin—going”, and Aleks rolls his eyes heavenward. He can’t believe his life anymore.

“Well, it sure sounds like you’re busy, man. I’ll call you back later”, but Asher will not give up the ghost, God love him. Or, well, probably not right this minute. Maybe in 15 minutes, but certainly not now. Fuck knows how many Hail Mary’s he’d need before God could love him right now.

“No—, hnnnngg, oh, shit—, are you—, oh, fuck, Jakob—, are you ok—?” He’s trying, bless him. 13 days must be a long time.

Aleks opens his mouth to reply, but the plastic fumbles again, this time Jakob’s voice is on the line, clear as a bell, and Aleks cracks a smile at Asher’s muffled whining for the phone back in the background. “He’ll call you back”, he says, unremarkably, not leaving room for any argument. The phone is hung up on their end and the dial-tone thrums, again, in Aleks’ ear.

He stares at the receiver, somewhat in disbelief. He briefly considers phoning Trevor, but after his, apparently successful, flirting with the female barista at the coffee shop, he’s not sure he’s ready for another audio-based porn. So, he decides against it. He decides, against his better judgement, to tell his dad. Besides, if this is what he thinks it is, he doesn’t want to be in the clink for perverting the course of justice by harbouring evidence, especially as an officer’s son.

He inhales and holds the breath in his lungs until it burns. Just to ground him. That’s all. Telling his dad is the right thing to do, right?

He unfolds his legs from his position on the bed and crawls over to the edge, swinging his somewhat-numb feet over the edge and placing them on the floor. He curls his toes around the decade-old carpet, just for the little bit of comfort it provides. He stands, walking hesitantly over to the chair, and reaches for the hat. He doesn’t understand how it’s still wet. It’s been a week. How long is material supposed to retain liquid?

Maybe it is alive, after all.

He walks down the stairs, purposefully stepping on all the creaky ones so his dad knows he’s coming. He should be awake. He should’ve woken up over an hour ago. Aleks hopes he’s well-rested, not wanting to catch him in a bad mood, especially with something this presumably delicate.

“Hey, dad?” He calls around the banister of the stairs. His father is sat on the couch, his typical cigarette hanging limply from the end of his lips. He doesn’t even look like he’s smoking it, he looks like he’s using it for decoration. Like the greaser’s did. Wanting the look but not wanting the lung cancer. That’s admirable, he supposes. At least they weren’t as stupid as they looked.

“What’s that in your hand?” Hook, line and sinker.

“I found it”, he confesses, like he’s a boy, again. Like he’s being scolded for digging in the garden, mud under his fingernails and muddy footprints going up the stairs. God, his father had gone ballistic. Ranting and raving about having to bathe his son, again. What would his mother have said, huh? The welt on his cheek had answered his response. 

**_You’d have to find her first._ **

“Found it where?” He digs, patience already wearing thin. Long nights, teenage sons. Drive anybody mad.

“The lake.” And his father’s eyes widen. First with surprise, then with anger.

“What the fuck have you been doing down at the lake? You know you’re not supposed to be down there!”

“Since when?” Responding with anger, naturally. You’re just like you’re father.

“Since I fucking said so. Gimme that!” His nails bite into Aleks’ hand as he snatches the hat from his grasp. Aleks figures he’s already in the hole, why not go 6 deep?

“Is it Larry’s?”

The sharp pain that travels across his cheek doesn’t feel well-deserved this time.

“Go to your room.” And Aleks doesn’t argue. Isn’t willing to sport a bruise on the other side. He turns on his tail, wiping a stray tear away as he wanders up the stairs. He quickens his pace, taking two steps at a time, when he hears the landline ringing.

“Hello?” He answers, clearing his throat of any emotion that his friends are bound to hear.

“It was the nurse”, Trevor’s voice travels, tinny, through the line. Aleks frowns.

“What?”

“Remember last week at the coffee shop? I was telling you my mom was working the night shift, had some fucked up shit come in?”

And Aleks thinks that vaguely rings a bell. “Fucked up shit?” He inquires, needing Trevor to elaborate so he can be brought up to speed.

Trevor groans, obviously frustrated. “They brought a body in! Two weeks ago, early hours of the morning, the police brought in a body to the hospital. It was all mangled and shit”, and Aleks definitely remembers now. He hums in response, urging Trevor to go on.

“It was the nurse. From school.” And Aleks’ ears are ringing now, for real. Maybe he has developed tinnitus in the time it took to climb the stairs and answer the phone. Trevor’s voice sounds faraway when he says her name. “Patricia, she’s the one who saw you right?” and Aleks nods, even though Trevor can’t see him. He’s not sure he could manage words. He swallows, the lump in his throat tight. He’s finding it hard to breathe.

She smelt like his mother.

“Aleks?” He says, his voice clipped like it’s not the first time he’s said it.

“Do they know who did it?” He can’t manage much else. It’s all he wants to know. He doesn’t want to know who she left behind, or how old she was, or who’s gonna feed her cats now that she's not there to do it, or who's gonna fill the vacancy. He just wants to know who did it.

“No.”

There’s a sick feeling in his belly. It feels acidic, like it’s rotting his gut as they speak. He has a feeling that he does know who did it. He has a feeling that the body might’ve been dripping wet when it was brought in. He has a feeling the cotton of her uniform might still be a little damp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops. It's been a while. 
> 
> If I only update once every 6 months, I can cling to the image of being a mysterious blob, who only floats down from their other plane of existence to post bi-yearly updates to their fanfiction, and definitely not the image of someone who doesn't have their life together.
> 
> Whatever! I've been busy and Cow Chop is honestly the last thing on my mind. I'm still in Pre-Asher-Being-Fired mode. Cow Chop Without Asher who? I don't know her.
> 
> Let me know what you think, and all that jazz. Find me at mightydogfood on Tumblr, where I don't post an ounce of Cow Chop because, as I said, who the fuck is she?
> 
> Thanks for reading. Hope you're well. If there's mistakes, so be it. Aren't we all full of them, anyway? Isn't that what makes us, well...us?
> 
> Besides, who the heck wants to beta this for me? The Queen of England? Doubt it. 
> 
> With that being said, please do let me know if there's any glaring mistakes. It ruins the immersion for me when I'm reading, and I don't want to be directly responsible for you losing yours.
> 
> Chapter title is from Watering by Big Thief.
> 
> See you all next year, probably!


	4. the dew fields and the bog

* * *

  **M** **E** **T A N O** **I** **A**

**_the dew fields and the bog_ **

* * *

 

 

Migration. The body, its decaying cotton still clinging tight, sits along the bank, now, the water just brushing its wrinkled toes. The nails lift after every rush, their beds no longer home. The body is losing colour, once a salmon pink now a greying bloom. Eyes glasses, a plea sitting like snow in a globe, unshaken.

* * *

There’s a wooden slat with a splinter in it. The bed’s not that old. Or, well. Okay. It’s probably as old as Aleks is but _he’s_ not that old. This side of 20. A bed should last longer than that, right? He wonders if there’s a guarantee lying around somewhere. Do they offer compensation for when wood splinters? It won’t be long until it bows, and then probably cracks. Aleks will soak through the mattress and with no slats to protect him, he'll nosedive into the kitchen below his bedroom. Maybe he’ll keep going. Maybe the cement beneath the house will form a sink hole and he’ll just keep falling and falling. Maybe he’ll reach Hell. Hell, maybe he’ll reach China. Bet that’d be confusing for a few people. For him to pop out in Beijing, out from under a manhole cover like a mole.

The slat has a splinter. The slat will crack.

Aleks runs his finger along the imperfection. He presses hard, his fingertip turning white. The capillaries retreating from the beach in the anticipation for a tsunami. He pulls his finger away and beet-red blood pools on the tip like a crown. Now he has a splinter. Where’s the crack?

“ _What are you doing_?” There it is.

“Shit!” Aleks whirls up in surprise and hits his head against the underside of his bed. “Jesus! Fuck!”. And then he looks.

He’d imagined being in his room with _The Boy_ but not exactly like this. The room smells damp. Humphrey watches with his beady-black eyes.

“ _Why are we under your bed?_ ”

“Oh, apology fucking accepted.” He grimaces, rubbing the heel of his hand against his pulsing forehead, mortified.

And _The Boy_ wears a troubled frown, his olive-ish skin bunching between his eyebrows. Aleks swallows around the admiration aching to crawl out of his mouth in the form of something embarrassing. “Why are you under my bed?”

 _“I asked you first”,_ and Aleks almost thinks he’s trying not to laugh.

“My school nurse is dead. I’m hiding under the bed until it stops being true.”

 _“I think you might be under here for a while”,_ a soft smile sits in the corner of his mouth, and Aleks pulls his bottom lip into his mouth and clamps his teeth over it, desperate to lunge forward and kiss that pitiful smile off the idiot’s face. What, is wanting to kiss your imaginary friend weird now? Who makes the rules for that shit anyway? His marbles are long gone.

“Was it you?” His tongue runs along his lip, a nervous tick he’s developed. An oral fixation perhaps. Ask Freud.

“ _You look skinny._ ” His eyes are steady. Dark. Almost black.

“I’m not eating. Answer me”.

“ _Why not?”_

“Because everyone around me is either going missing or dying brutally. Did you fucking kill her?”

“No.” Resolutely. No room for argument. His eyes are sincere.

Dread sits, stagnant. If not him, who?

“ _How long have you been under here?”_

Aleks looks to him, his wide, dark, caring eyes. “What time is it?”

Aleks watches him roll out from under the bed and look over the frame to see the alarm clock. Aleks watches his t-shirt ride up to reveal a stripe of tummy. Skin folds over itself along his hips as he leans awkwardly, stretching his neck over the mattress. Dark hair travels, hidden, under his waistband. His skin is slightly blue, like the type of blue that your body turns when the bath water turns the colder side of luke warm and you've been in there too long. Aleks extends a hand to touch him but reels back as if he’s been burnt when _The Boy_ ’s face comes into view again. His heart beats fast in his chest. If he looks down, he could probably see it trying to beat out of his shirt.

Aleks watches him, again, situate himself back down under the bed, resting himself on his elbows to stare down at Aleks. He forces himself to look away. Too much of this staring business.

“ _It’s 10:30_ ”.

“AM or PM?”

“ _It’s dark out so I’m going to assume evening. Which would be worse?”_

Aleks swallows, “well, if it was morning, I’d have been under here all night.”

“ _As opposed to all evening_.” _The Boy_ replies, dry.

Aleks huffs, humourlessly. His imaginary friend judging _him_? Fuck off. “Yeah, I guess.” His teeth are clenched hard and his response comes out quiet, mumbled.

“ _Your finger’s still bleeding_ ”, he announces, and Aleks is in the middle of replying with something scathing and sardonic when _The Boy_ reaches for his hand. He brings Aleks’ finger to his mouth and licks a long stripe to the tip, catching the blood that had started to sink into his knuckles. He finishes his feast with an ever-so-slight pop on the tip of his finger and lets Aleks pull his hand back.

Aleks can see his own blood on _The Boy’s_ lips and can’t work if he should feel disgusted that _The Boy_ just sucked his blood like some wannabe cannibal, or disgusted that he found it really fucking hot. The throbbing in his underwear doesn’t seem to care for the semantics. _The Boy’s_ eyes become impossibly darker, the pupils eating away at any colour that once lived there.

Aleks closes his eyes in a bid to calm himself down, and when he opens them again, _The Boy_ is gone.

* * *

 

“This is the last time I’m doing it,” Lindsey slides a piece of paper across the table, speaking with quiet resignation, scorning like the mother she pretends to be, “I’m not sure you’ve ever done a piece of homework in your life”. She closes the mile-high binder the homework came from and heaves it into her backpack with a groan.

Aleks thanks her with a smug grin. “Why would I, when I have you?” Her hand rears up to strike him, a mock-offended look on her face, but the bark of their insipid literature teacher stalls her in her tracks.

“Miss Washburn, I trust you’re not misbehaving?” And Lindsey cowers under his smiting gaze.

Aleks looks to his desk, feeling the eyes in the room on him. He hates being the centre of attention. Frankly, he can’t think of anything worse, hence why he made Lindsey sit in the back corner, and further cementing his theory that Mr Wilson is watching Lindsey constantly, the creepy fuck. How else would he be able to see what she was doing over 30 other heads? Why would he care? This is high school, and it’s not AP. He doubts a single head in this room wants to be in attendance, bar Lindsey of course, who’ll take any ounce of free education she can get.

Aleks shoots her a contrite smile, feeling guilty that he got her into trouble. She winks. A troublemaker despite herself.

Aleks opens his notebook, pulls the pen from behind his ear, uncaps it and lays it along the open spine, fully intending to write something today. He tucks the homework Lindsey did for him into one of the pages.

He runs a hand along the back of his hairline and down his neck absentmindedly, trying his best to listen to the teacher garble on about some nonsense that Aleks is sure isn’t even English. He pulls his fingers away from his neck, and they’re shiny, like they’re wet. He puts his hand to his neck again, and it’s damp. He itches at the spot and feels skin flake away, like a barely-there mesh keeping all his organs inside his body. He pulls his hand away and looks at his fingers. They’re black with blood.

He stands up, abruptly, jostling both Lindsey and the desk. She squawks in surprise. So much for not being the centre of attention. He excuses himself from the classroom, ignoring the pointed glare from Humbert Humbert and runs for the bathroom.

Shouldering the swinging door open, a clear fault in design, he heads for the furthest cubicle. He slams the door behind him and hastily does up the lock. His hands are shaking so he misses the hole a few times and he whimpers, the desperation of needing to be alone overwhelming him.

He puts the toilet seat down and sits. And breathes. He sits with his feet on the seat, puts his head between his knees and his hands, clasped, behind his neck, like this is a Drop, Cover and Hold-On drill in the event of an earthquake, or your whole world collapsing in on itself. His eyes are squeezed shut so tight they might as well not be there.

The bathroom itself in dingy, not having been decorated since it was erected those 10 million years ago, and there’s an ever-present stench of urine. But it’ll do.

When the urge to vomit is not as oppressing, he opens his eyes. It takes him a few seconds to be able to see clearly without light flares and weird shapes floating around, and when everything is as close to 20/20 as it’s ever gonna get, he pulls his hands away from his neck and brings them in front of his face, once again.

They’re as clean as the day he was born. Not an ounce of colour on his alabaster skin. He frowns, his panic-stricken brain not catching up with the situation quite yet. He touches his hand to his neck again to double check, but they come away clean again. He huffs, humourlessly, and his cheeks flare with embarrassment. He should be used to shit like this by now.

He stands, slowly, and unlocks the stall. His hands are steady, and the lock slides open effortlessly, just to mock him. He walks to the sink, turns on the tap and splashes water onto his face, hoping to kick himself back into some semblance of working order. The bell for the end of the period rings, making Aleks jump. He realises that he must’ve been in there for some fucking time. And that he’s not as calm as he feels, the residual panic hanging on like a bad smell.

Lindsey tells him where he needs to be, and what time he needs to be there, so his grasp on his own timetable is a little less than loose. He has no idea what’s happening at any given time. So, when he opens the door bathroom fully and sees what seems to be the whole fucking alumni milling around, he wonders how long he was in there.

He spots his gang in the quad over the crowds and weaves through what seems like the entire fucking alumni before he gets there. His bag is hanging limply from Lindsey’s hand and he counts himself lucky to have her, no matter how undeserving he is.

“Eat a bad curry last night?” Brett asks, when Aleks is close enough to hear him.

Aleks frowns, though in the back of his mind, he knows where this is going. “What?”

“Lindsey says you rushed out of the classroom like a bat outta hell, figured you ate somethin’ that decided to make an appearance in the middle of your Hamlet reading. Something rotten, right?”, he says, the smug smile on his face suggesting that he thinks he’s the funniest fucking person alive, but Aleks would rather this than Lindsey have told them what had really happened. Because she’s not stupid, and she knows something’s up. So, he goes along with it.

“Yeah”, he says, faux-amusement on his face, “dad went to that new Indian place on the corner. Can tell why it’s empty year fuckin’ round.”

“Thought he was working?” Damn Trevor for knowing every inch of his life. The hard set of his jaw speaking for itself.

“He left it in the fridge.”

“Yeah, for how long?”, Jakob joins in now, and Aleks feels like he’s the bear at the circus, treading lightly to avoid the pins on the floor to keep up this fucking dance. Some sick performance to stop people asking questions. “It might’ve been old. Probably why it gave you the shits”.

“Okay. Can we stop talking about shit now, please? It’s too early”, once again, Lindsey saves the day. He should really start doing his homework, “besides, haven’t you fuckers got lessons to go to?”

Brett looks at his watch then, and his eyes widen in alarm. “Shit! I’m going to be late for wrestling. See you guys later!”, and the lumbering fool of a boy turns on a dime and waves over his shoulder before disappearing back into the main school building. Asher and Jakob bid their farewells, and Lindsey gives Aleks a stern look, pushing his abandoned rucksack into his chest, before leaving as well.

Trevor still has that hard look on his face, and Aleks’ conscience plays heavily on him. “What’s going on with you?” and Aleks looks away, not wanting to have this conversation right now. Or ever.

“I’m serious. I’m tired of this shit.” His hands are bunched at his sides. “You’re going to flunk out of the year if you carry on." He's 6 months younger than Aleks, why's he talking like he's 20 years older? This is bullshit. "You wanna be like Brett, huh? Nearly 21 and still in fucking school?” He rubs a hand over his tired face. “Talk to me”. His hands outstretched like he’s begging for mercy. Aleks wishes he could give it to him.

“I think the wrestling knocked most of the brain cells out of Brett's head, in his defence”, he’s trying to be smart to deflect, but Trevor doesn’t crack a smile. His face remains medusa and Aleks can’t bear to look at the hurt sitting deep in his face. He figures his time is up, and he heaves a deep sigh.

“I’m seeing the boy from the lake”, he confesses, not really looking at anything. Wanting to be as far away from this conversation as possible with his body still in the middle of it. The jury gasps.

“And when you say seeing, you mean—?” He stalls, waiting for Aleks to finish his sentence, not wanting to overstep or assume.

“Seeing, Trevor!”, he’s looking at Trevor now, “Like how people see? With their eyes?”. He's feeling defensive, his voice is high in his throat, and Trevor nods, not taking the bait. Not wanting to fight.

“Ah. Okay. I thought you meant seeing like, boyfriends. Like you were fucking some monster”, and he’s laughing. But Aleks doesn’t think it’s very funny. Calling _The Boy_ a monster doesn’t sit right with him at all. But he doesn’t think getting indignant about an off-hand comment is a good idea, especially when it seems like Trevor might not find it funny either, but laughing is all he can bring himself to do. So, he stows it away. He’ll bring it up when Trevor is more acclimated with Aleks being a full-blown maniac.

“No, I’m not fucking a fish, dude. I’m just—”, he rubs the back of his neck again, and flinches away at the memory of feeling the inside of his body on the outside, “seeing him. Everywhere.” His arms are folded across his chest, like he’s trying to protect himself. Like his flesh is a suit of armour against whatever the hell is happening to him.

He doesn’t feel any safer, just small. He’s 8 again and his mother’s just walked out after a particularly hostile conversation with his father about his drinking. His father had swung, and missed, inebriated to the point of no return, and Aleks’ mother had decided she wasn’t taking any chances. She’d skulked in the next morning, though, the scrambled eggs she’d made enough apology for the both. Aleks had sulked at the breakfast table. It was all so unfair. Where was her apology? Where were her scrambled eggs?

She’d come to visit him in his bedroom, afterwards, with a steaming hot chocolate in his favourite yellow mug, marshmallows floating on the top. She’d whispered promises into his forehead, “ _I’ll take you with me next time”_ , and Aleks had pretended that he couldn’t feel her warm tears landing in his hair.

“Have you spoken to anyone else about it?” Trevor asks, bringing him back to Earth, concern sitting heavy on his face. Aleks shakes his head no. “Do you want to?” Aleks shakes his head again, looking glum. “Okay, then it can stay between us. I promise not to tell anybody,” and he holds his pinkie out, wiggling it when Aleks doesn’t react, “uh, pinkie promise, dude. Come on.”

And Aleks holds his hand out, then. He doesn’t want to disappoint Trevor. Not again. They link pinkie fingers like they’re 10 years old and in the playground, and Aleks is pinkie promising that he won’t tell Cindy about Trevor’s crush on her. They were blood brothers, then.

“Good. Now, don’t keep secrets from me again”, Trevor orders, “or I’ll have to kill you.” He punctuates the threat with a swift slap to the upper arm, and Aleks gasps in mock-outrage, breaking out into a grin when Trevor laughs. His smile drops, though, into something more serious and they nod, promising not to keep secrets from each other again.

The moment sobers, and Trevor glances down at his watch. “Aren’t we supposed to be in gym?”

He gestures for Trevor to lead the way, following him through the swinging door towards the gym.

Aleks uncrosses his fingers from behind his back.

* * *

 

Aleks realises the minute he walks through the gymnasium doors that he doesn’t have his kit with him, having been preoccupied with more important thoughts as of late, thanks. That means he’s going to have to go to Lost and Found and talk to the wretched woman who mans the front desk.  He watches everybody running around in their pearl white t-shirt and clean black shorts and _knows_ that he’s going to both look _and_ feel like the village idiot in kit covered in mud that’s probably started growing its own life.

He tells Trevor that he’ll meet him on the court with a soft shove and makes his way to the reception. He ambles, not in any particular rush to be the laughing stock of Midwestern America, but he knows that if he takes the piss and arrives to class too late, he’ll be hung out to dry. So, he walks as fast as his self-preservation will let him, his shoes squeaking on the linoleum, steamed to within an inch of its life.

“How can I help you?” She asks before he’s even in sight. He presumes she heard his shoes. Maybe she’s part bat with echolocation. She’s not terrible old, though the stress of her job has aged her. She wears her hair in faded-red dye, her grey hair peeking through in her roots and making her appear to have a receding hairline. Her skin is covered in a sweaty gloss, and she smells vaguely of stale coffee, as most administration does, for whatever reason. She offers him a smile, but it’s cold. Or vacant. She doesn’t care. He can’t blame her.

He reaches the desk, and drums his fingers on the wood, embarrassed. “I need to borrow a spare kit”, he explains, “for gym.”

“Your name?” She asks, flat, already pulling out the form that Aleks need to sign like he’s handling important goods and not unwashed clothes that are probably older than he is.

"Marchant, Aleksandr", he leans forward slightly so she can hear him.

“Whose class are you in?” Not looking at him.

“Dunlop, ma’am”.

And she grimaces like it makes her uncomfortable to hear the formality. She fills out the parts of the form that are pertinent to her, and then slides it over to him. She needs a manicure.

“Sign your signature next to the box with your name in it. Bring the kit back, washed. Failure to do so will result in a penalty”, and it’s a well-rehearsed dance. Aleks bites his tongue. He thinks it’s a little unfair. He knows full well that this kit hasn’t been washed a day in his life, so why should he break the cycle?

Instead, he says, “thanks”, not sure he means it. He takes the kit she handed to him off the desk and lets it swing down, hitting him in the side of the leg. He salutes her with one finger as he leaves, heading for the changing rooms.

When he gets there, Trevor’s in his usual spot, the corner near the showers. It smells weird over there so no one ever bothers them. It's a safe space from meatheaded idiots with one brain cell between them.

“Hey!” He greets, cheery as ever, already dressed. “You got one?” and Aleks holds up the bag in victory. Trevor clasps and unclasps his hands, gesturing for Aleks to give it to him for further inspection. He throws it underarm on his way over and Trevor catches it in his chest. He opens the bag and closes his eyes, grimacing at the smell.

“Ew-uh, yuck. Come smell this.” And Aleks really doesn’t fucking want to, but he does. He leans in. It smells like mildew. Like his grandmother’s basement. Like pushing laundry away wet. Trevor passes it back to him, not wanting to be in possession of something so putrid, the drama queen. “Who’s it belong to?” He asks, peering over into the bag where Aleks is reading the label on the back of the shorts.

“James Wilson”, he frowns, raising an eyebrow in question, “ever heard of him?”

“Nope!” Trevor says, “And now you’re wearing his clothes. That’s pretty gross, man. Sounds like that stranger danger shit they talk about in assemblies”, and Aleks rolls his eyes.

“What would you have me do, go out there naked? Get a detention? Who’s gonna hang out with your loser-ass if I get detention?”

Trevor nods. “Fair.”

They’re interrupted by their gym teacher busting into the changing rooms, screaming like a drill sergeant. Probably got kicked out of the Marines for being a pain in the ass, if the suck-up tattoo on his forearm says anything. Other than _I’m A Tool_.

“Time to go, boys! Out, out, out!” He’s gesturing wildly with his hands, trying to rush 30 very uninterested teenagers out into the cold, winter air. “Track field in t-minus five minutes”, Aleks rolls his eyes at the wannabe Schwarzenegger fuck. “Anyone not out there in five minutes or less gets an hour detention after school, with me!”, and like a tsunami, everyone single ass flies up from their seat and races out of the door.

* * *

 

Aleks slams the front door shut when he gets home, happy to be out of the biting cold, having spent two grueling hours running around in it at school already. He's pretty sure the military drill they were doing isn't on the school curriculum. He takes a quick glance at himself in the mirror hung on the wall in the hallway and huffs at his reflection.  He looks like a porcelain doll. His nose and cheeks are rosy red, and his hair is standing up on end. He sniffs, his nose running. He'll probably get a cold, he usually does. Genetics skipped out of the Good Immune System part.

He huffs and heaves his bag onto the floor by the stairs. With it being determined to slip off his shoulder the whole way home, Aleks is glad to be rid of the weight.

He leans down and pulls the balled-up kit out of his bag, and heads to the kitchen where the washer is. There’s another note waiting for him on the table.

In chicken scratch Aleks is surprised he can even read, the note drawls: _Gone fishing. Money on the table for takeout. Don’t wait up._

Aleks screws up his face. Since when the fuck does his dad fish? He’s never seen any fishing poles lying around, nor any bait in the fridge. Not to mention that this is the first time he’s hearing about it. But whatever, he’s not his father’s mother. At least he was nice enough to leave dinner money. He hopes he'll put it to good use but the devil on his shoulders says it's not fucking likely. Aleks picks it up from the table and slides it into the back pocket of his jeans. Whatever.

He opens the washer, takes the kit from where he left it balled up on the table and tosses it in. Thank fuck his dad stocked up on washer tablets because like fuck is he paying a penalty charge for not washing something that should’ve been washed twelve years ago.

_“Isn’t that your mother’s job?”_

Aleks spins, facing the boy apparently now in his kitchen.

“That’s a little archaic, isn’t it?” He hopes the sarcasm masks the fear, and the anger. He feels resentful. Shouldn't everyone know about his mother? Shouldn't the world stop spinning to look for her? “Do you ever say hello? Or do you just say whatever the fuck is on your mind when you enter a room?" He tuts, sucking spit between his teeth. "Sounds like you might need to talk to someone about that, buddy”. He’s an asshole and he knows it. It’s genetic. He wishes he was sorry, but when a strange lake-living boy turns up in your kitchen, there's not a huge amount of room for niceties or southern hospitality. Besides, this is the Mid-west. 

 _The Boy_ licks his lips. “ _Where’s your father?”_

“Fishing”, he shoves his hands in his pockets.

“ _Do you know where?”_ His voice rumbles like it’s a being of his own. Aleks swears he feels the walls shake around him.

Aleks shrugs. “I didn’t know he fished until like, two minutes ago.”

 _“What are you washing?”_ Like he's determined to give Aleks whiplash with these sudden subject changes. _Someone_ needs to switch to decaf.

And anyway, what is this, the Spanish Inquisition? “Spare kit from school. Forgot my own.”

“ _It’s on your bed.”_ He states matter-of-factly, like that’s the kind of information he should be privy to.

And Aleks’ eyes widen. “Pardon?", he stumbles in surprise, "What, you’re hanging out in my bedroom when I’m not here, now? That’s a little fucking weird, don’t’cha think?”

_“I was looking for something.”_

“I—what? I don’t fucking know you! What could I possibly have that you want?”

 _“Well, don’t I have something you want?”_ and Aleks’ heart stops. For just a second. But it stops. Aleks feels his veins whine with vacancy. He blinks, slow.

He swallows. He’s being careful. He knows the answer, but he’s not willing to play his hand if he’s not getting the chips in the middle of the table.

 _The Boy_ advances on him, cornering him against the island by the sink. Trust his father to do the washing up, for once, the security of his ever-abandoned bread knife not available at the moment. Leave a message. Aleks could sure use the reassurance right now.

 _The Boy_ braces his hands on either side of Aleks’ body, leaving him no room to manoeuvre. Conceding is certainly not how you win poker, but Aleks is powerless to do anything else. His legs feel like jelly, the adrenaline making his body thrum. Panic ebbs, slowly. He’s not willing to let go of it just yet.

“ _You should have a bath. You look cold_ ”. He rumbles, running the back of his finger along Aleks’ flushed cheek, and Aleks closes his eyes at the sensation, drinking it in. This is what he wants. All the time. For ever. He wants _The Boy's_ hands on him, wherever he can reach, whenever he wants to. His hands are freezing, but Aleks doesn’t care. 

The sensation vanishes, and Aleks opens his eyes, confused. He stands in the kitchen alone, again, still reeling. The warmth in his belly and fluttering in his chest becoming a bit _too_ familiar in his opinion. How many times can he reach the edge of the cliff and not jump? 

He looks to the floor and speaks, quiet like a child forgotten. “Bye, then.” With only empty air to hear him.

The washer clunks the familiar song of a machine too many times repaired. It screams with age. Replace me, please.

Let me let go.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Christmas came early.
> 
> Title is from Yuki Onna by Adrianne Lenker and Buck Meek.
> 
> I'm on tumblr @mightydogfood if you wanna chat.


	5. may june bugs fly

* * *

**M** **E** **T A N O** **I** **A**

**_may june bugs fly_ **

 

* * *

 

Have you ever loved someone so much that you would believe anything they said? Have you ever loved someone enough to believe they could do no wrong? Even if it meant forgetting everything you know is true?

* * *

 

Mary Clover was a lover. She was a jitterbug, born in 1944 to a humble couple living in rural Massachusetts. A sunny disposition, with honey hair and milk skin, she stood at the meagre height of 5’4, with a lithe body resembling a woman never quite outgrowing a girl. She tended on the shy side, her voice not often used, but had allowed the thrill of adventure to be sewn in, regardless.

Her father was a military man, having been drafted in 1939 at the height of the Second World War. He had up and left one day, with a last farewell on her mother’s rose-kissed lips and the promise of being back as soon as he could. Her mother had described Mary as a gift, with tearful joy, when it seemed like her loneliness could climb no higher. But, even with the hint of morose in her voice at the memory, her father’s arrival after nearly six gruelling years had made the wait worth it. She had believed in the phrase, “absence makes the heart go stronger”, but her mother’s own account had made it law.

Her mother was an amateur seamstress, teaching herself how to sew when she was a child, patching up the holes in her sister’s smocks to save the little money her family had had. At the very height of the Great Depression, she had watched her father leave, walking down the rickety cobblestone path leading away from her house, with the promise of a better job with better prospects and a slightly fuller paycheck, and had never seen him again. She had promised Mary when she was a toddler to never let her grow up fatherless, as she had. The pain would be too intolerable for Mary, an already sensitive babe, and her mother could not bear it herself again.

Mary had grown up around skill, her interests nourished to the marrow. An avid reader, she had sworn to read every book in their small cottage to the backwall of the bookshelf. She considered herself knowledgeable, easily besting her parents on their knowledge, but without boast. She wanted to share, not to scorn. So, when she announced over a slow-roasting stew, that she had prepared while her parents were working, that she was thinking of training to be teacher, not a chair at the table was surprised. Instead, elated, they pushed for her to enrol in university, using her job as a diner waitress to finance the endeavour, knowing full well that offering her financial support would be met with disdain, her fierce independence refusing to accept handouts.  

She had laid in her bed that warm June night with a smile so wide it could be seen from space. Hell, the man on the moon was probably smiling along with her. She had never felt so lucky. Her hands felt heavy with the world, the Earth peering up at her from her fingers, an opportunity on every corner of the globe beckoning her to try.

Mary had fallen asleep a little after 1am, unusually late for her, but her brain had refused to give in. Her hard work seemed to be a little closer to being paid off.

* * *

 

The wind whips. Mary tucks her chin into her scarf and readjusts the hat on her head. She’s forced to walk to work, her parents leaving for work early and her being too broke to afford a car. The only co-workers she has that can drive are the ones with fifty years behind them, and she’d much rather walk than pool with them, nice as they are.

The one friend she’s made is a kind, but outspoken girl called Susie. Mary sometimes watches Susie as she’s making the coffee rounds in the morning and wonders how they ever became friends, being so completely opposite to each other. Susie is a little older than Mary, only by a few months, but Susie never lets her forget it. Any time she can pull rank, she does. Mary loves her, so she allows herself to be humoured.

She’s a tall and supple dark-haired, dark-skinned art student, living a little outside of the town, in a leaking hole in the wall. Mary thinks she ought to be a model, but she doesn’t seem very interested, tabloids touting the hyper-sexualisation of young girls as the reason. Mary had smiled along with Susie’s diatribe, the more she got wound up the more beautiful she became, if that were even possible. Mary had counted herself lucky then, too.

She’d invited Mary there, to her apartment, once or twice, Mary obliging only to hear the end of it. The last time, it’d been for Mary’s twentieth birthday, and Susie had refused to let it go by uncelebrated. They’d stayed up late into the night, throwing off Mary’s well-kept sleeping schedule, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care at the time. Mary would go again, if Susie asked.

Mary steps onto the curb from the road, huffing quietly when the toe of her Mary-Janes scuff against the cement. They’re polished black and patent, per her boss’s request. The buckle presses hard into her foot, the strap having been done up too tight in her rush to get out of the house. Her pinafore sits folded in her bag, neatly ironed the night before. She, at least, prepared that.

She counts herself lucky that her boss is respectful and professional. She sometimes overhears her classmates talking before lectures about their bosses, who are a little too friendly, a little too interested. She tries to mind her own business, but the girls in her class are not quiet talkers.

She walks towards the diner door, waving when she catches Susie’s eye through the glass.

The bell rings above her head when she opens it and walks in, stamping the dew from her boots on the doormat. She takes her hat from her head and shoves it into her coat pocket. There’s a steaming coffee waiting on the counter for her, like it is every morning, on the house. Or the chef, who beams at her from his station. She waves a good morning and heads for the locker room, Susie in tow.

“Morning, pipsqueak.” Her voice is like syrup, low and smooth. She tucks a loose strand of her uncontrollable hair behind her ear, the faux-pearl earring hanging from her lobe glinting in the light.

“Morning, Suse. How’s it been so far?” She replies, letting her coat hang from her shoulders as she opens her locker, setting her coffee down on top of the unit, thankfully not very tall in its stature.

“Usual’s came in for their coffee. Frank came in with a special lady, Dorothy, this morning”, she raises a brow and inclines her head, “never thought I’d see the day”, her teeth pearl white against her cocoa skin. She shares a delighted laugh, leaning her hip against the letterbox red lockers. Mary hadn’t thought it’d ever happen either.

After Virginia, they all assumed that Frank would remain heartbroken until the day he died. And that he’d die soon, which would’ve been a real shame. Frank was the favourite amongst the waitresses, so often well-dressed and polite, his eyes holding a well of stories begging to be heard. But he hadn’t felt much like talking for the past year, so Mary’s secretly overjoyed that she might get to hear him say more besides, “Thank you, miss”, for once.

“Other than that, nothing really of interest. How’s your morning been?”

“Oh, riveting, Susanne. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve been up to, and all before 10am”, she looks at Susie through her lashes and counts off on her fingers, “I volunteered at the senior hospice, and then I solved world hunger, _and_ I even had time for oatmeal”, knocking Susie jovially on the upper arm, she speaks earnestly “and you’re still the best part of my day.”

She snorts, covering her face with her hand before levelling, serious. “Okay, Margaret. You’re cute but you’re not _that_ cute.”

Mary grins. “You think I’m cute? Oh, Suse”, she drawls. Susie pushes off from her position leaning against the locker and storms out of the room. “Oh, it’s hard to see you leave, but I love to watch you go!”, Mary shouts after her, laughing when Susie purposely wiggles her hips that little bit more, grinning coy over her shoulder as she disappears from view.

Mary puts her satchel on the bench in the middle of the locker room, and slips her coat from her shoulders, folding it over her arm to fit into the locker. She turns and undoes the buckle of her bag, taking out the pinafore apron and tying it around her waist. She tucks the issued notepad and pen in her waist pocket, and then closes her satchel and lifts it into the locker.

She looks at herself in the locker mirror, tucking a loose hair behind her ears and making sure the barrette is tight enough that her hair will stay in place. She sighs, and then closes the door, locking the padlock with her issued key.

She yawns as she reaches up to grab her coffee. Thank god for Miguel.

Susie pops her head in the door, but only to snap her fingers. Mary rolls her eyes lovingly. 10am rolls around quickly.

The bell above the door rings. The diner has just started serving lunch, and their regulars are filtering in like someone disturbed an anthill. The diner isn’t ever particularly busy, but lunch is always bustling. Mary waves at Agnes, a lady in her mid-70s, who orders the same grilled cheese every Wednesday. Mary shouts over her shoulder that grilled cheese has arrived, and Miguel gets to work.

It settles for 15 minutes, and Mary takes the opportunity to drink another coffee. Late-night studying had her up for most of the night, and she’s feeling it now. She watches Susie bob to Sinatra flowing from the jukebox. Mary surveys the floor, and it’s like Susie’s captivated the eye of every patron in the room.

 **_The time is right, your perfume fills my head, the stars get red and, oh, the night's so blue,_ ** **_  
and then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like "I love you"_ **

And then the bell tolls above the door again. It’s a lone man, and like a heat seeking missile, he marches his way over the counter. From the front door to the counter, a sick sway to his hips as his heavy boots plod against the linoleum floor, Mary watches with dull panic. Being afraid of strangers is something she’d had to get over quickly, but this feels different. This man may be a stranger, but he’s also _strange_.

Eyes wide and face pale, Mary figures the man is a little over 40, stout and with a copper coloured beard that he wears ragged on his chin, like he hasn't combed it out in a few years. Like he doesn't have a wife to remind him it needs trimming. He wears a newsboy cap tight against his head, the sinew of hair peeking out from under the rim. His cheeks are ruddy with the cold, but he doesn't seem to mind much. He takes his waterproof off and hangs it over his arm as he leans against the counter.

The deep purple under his eyes is a dark contrast to his sallow skin. Susie races over and takes charge, sensing Mary’s discomfort, and leads him to a booth to be seated. He skulks after her, as she leads him to a booth in the far corner, facing away from the counter so he can be kept an eye on but not being able to keep an eye. Mary smiles small to herself, eternally grateful for Susanne Rizzo’s unwavering confidence.

But Susie is Susie, and sometimes, she thinks Mary should flounder. _Fear is a good teacher_ , as if that’s enough of an explanation. But still, when she walks to the counter to pass her station to Mary, Susie squeezes her hand, and Mary lets herself be calmed.

Mary nods curtly, mostly to herself, and heads from the counter to the back corner of the diner, briefly stopping at the red leather booth that Agnes is sat at, bidding her a good morning despite it being early afternoon, and assuring that Agnes is enjoying her grilled cheese. She stalls for as long as she can, but the man clears his throat, and Mary figures her reprieve is over. She brushes the back of Agnes’ booth as a farewell.

“Good morning, sir—”, she starts but the auburn stranger interrupts her.

“Norman.”

“Norman”, she clears her throat, correcting herself as if she’s supposed to know the name of every Tom, Dick and Harry that walks into her diner. “What can I get for you?”

“You do pancakes?” He’s short, and eye-contact doesn’t seem to be his strong suit.

“Absolutely, sir. We do regular flour pancakes, blueberry pancakes, but they’re usually for breakfast. We can offer you chicken or turkey wraps, or burgers?” Mary tries, but it seems the man is set in his ways.

“I’ll have the regular pancakes. Piping hot and doused in syrup. Do you have lemon and sugar?” He looks at her then, but not really in her eyes. Just in the general direction of her face.

“Yes, sir. The sugar, lemon juice, and syrup come in an assorted basket, so you can apply them yourself. I’ll go get one for you. Did you want anything else, or will that be all?”

“Black coffee.”

She scrawls R. Pan, and B Coffee on her notepad, nods her farewell to Norman and heads back to the counter. She catches Susie’s eye, who’s inclined behind the till and against the counter, with a cup of coffee in her hand. She’s grinning, mirth dancing in her eyes. She loves to tease, so when Mary’s within earshot, she says, “so, when’s the wedding?”

“His name is Norman.” She replies, dry. “They’re remaking Psycho in this diner and I’m Marion”, she walks past Susie and into the kitchen.

“Well, better put the wedding on hold and use the money you saved for it to buy a grave plot”, Susie shouts over the separator, and as funny as she is, Mary ignores her.

“Miguel.” She announces loudly over the sound of the oil sizzling on the grill. “Stack of pancakes, doused in sugar”, and when Miguel levels her with a look, she shrugs. “He said it.”

She reaches for one of the small wicker assortment baskets that holds various condiments, sugar, and syrup, and heads back onto the floor. The man is looking at her, his gaze stormy. Mary waits for Miguel to call it, and then takes the pancakes from him, and begins her procession to the booth, walking backwards for a few beats, begging Susie for help, before turning around and making the rest of the way over to the back-corner booth.

“Here you go, sir. Your pancakes and your lemon, sugar and syrup. Please enjoy”, she implores, with a weird intensity, “If you need anything else, I’ll be right over by the counter.” She smiles sickly sweet, hoping to win him over, not being able to stand being disliked, but the man just nods, and Mary takes her leave silently. Her Mary Janes clack softly against the floor.

* * *

 

Mary figures that he hadn't been anything to worry about. He was small, even to her frame where anything seemed big. She knows she’s being stupid, but still: the intensity of his gaze unnerved her.

She finds herself looking over her shoulder on the walk home, the 5pm dusk having not quite been grasped by twilight just yet. She walks a little faster than usual, a rushed skip in her walk, and she hears the relief in her breath when her house comes into view. She hates being scared.

She races up the porch steps, careful not to slip. She closes the heavy front door with force and leans against it, breathing a heavy sigh of relief. She drops the satchel in the vestibule, unbuckles her shoes and toes them off, and then hangs her coat up with the amalgamation of others.

She walks into the house, the smell of red pepper soup greeting her senses warmly.

“Mama?” She calls out, listening with a keen ear for a jolt in the rhythm of the house. She hears a pan being put down on the kitchen island, and smiles at her mother when she pokes her head out of the kitchen.

“Darling!” She greets, and then waves her hand, gesturing for Mary to walk further into the house. “Come in, come in. Your father’s making soup.”

“Yeah, I can smell it. Smells delicious. Is it red pepper?”

She hears her father’s low, hearty grumble of laughter and feels a lump in her throat, suddenly full of warmth.

“Sure is! Red pepper and chili. Your favourite, courtesy of your grandfather, God rest his soul.” Her father replies, raising his voice to help it carry. “Are you ready to eat now?” He asks when Mary walks into the kitchen. His dark, wiry moustache hangs neatly over his upper lip, just shy of touching his teeth when he grins. He’s in need of a trim.

“Absolutely! I’m starving.” Not really in the mood to whine, she doesn’t care to ask about their respective days, fearing they’ll reverse the question. She’d much rather enjoy her meal and head to bed early.

They sit down at their oak dining table, adorned with a deep green table cloth her mother had made for Christmas one year, wanting to stray away from the traditional red. Mary sits on one side of the square table, while her parents sit on the other. There’s an inch of space between them, as if they’re so in love they’d prefer to be one person, and Mary smiles down into her orange soup. Will that ever be her?

It hurts until it doesn’t.

When bowls are scraped clean, she cajoles her parents into the lounge to relax while she cleans up, preferring to do it alone. She finds it satisfying to watch the ceramics become clean, and to know that when they’re all dried and put away, that the kitchen is back in order. It helps her calm down.

She pops her head into the living room when she’s done to tell her parents that she’s heading to bed. After she cleans her teeth and washes her face, she goes into her bedroom, undresses into her sleepwear and then she sits at her vanity table, staring at herself in the mirror. She looks haggard. Who knew working at a diner would be so stressful?

She takes her hair out from her barrette and lets it sit, untamed, long against her back. Her scalp aches where she’s had her thick curls contained all day, so she runs her hands through it a few times, massaging her scalp on the way through. She brushes it, braids it, and then gets into bed. The sheet is cold, just the way she likes it.

The instant her head hits the pillow, she’s out. Falling into a deep slumber, beneath layers upon layers of fabric, fighting against the winter cold.

The next Wednesday morning starts a little easier than the week before. She wakes up with enough time to shower, to eat breakfast (oatmeal, her favourite), and to get dressed for work without putting anything on backwards in a rush. Today, she’s wearing thermal stockings, not making the same mistake as last week of only wearing 60 denier and never actually feeling warm. She runs her hands through her hair, curly from the braid, and clips it half up with her favourite clip, a long and slender barrette, brindle brown in colour. She likes the contrast it offers her hair. Makes her feel more put together.

She heads down the short flight of stairs leading to the first floor of the house. She grabs a banana from the fruit bowl on her way to the vestibule, to have as a snack when morale starts to dwindle. The potassium usually lifts her right up.

She packs her apron in her bag, along with her notepad and a water bottle. The less coffee, the better. She dons her winter coat, a teddy coat with faux-silk lining, her winter hat, and a pair of mittens, which she saves until she’s buckled her shoes. She puts the banana in her pocket for good measure, pulls her satchel over her shoulder, and heads out of the door into the icy tundra.

 

* * *

 

Mary hadn't known it then, but in that moment, watching the stranger walk through the door, the bell ringing his announcement above his head, she had fallen in love with him.

Susie was babbling to Miguel about her Lifelike Art class, and how much of a treat it was that they had had nude models in, and Miguel was been stifling laughter in between whispers, when the bell sung loudly throughout the store.

“No, seriously Miguel, listen—. Hey, you might be a Nancy and not appreciate it, but that class was the best class of my life. Hands down, I wanted to shake Betty’s hand on the way out. Those women were angelic, like they’d been on special reserve for the day from heaven itself”, her hands flailing wildly as she gesticulates, before landing palm down and splayed against her chest, where her heart ought to be.

Miguel’s voice is muffled behind his palm, where he’s leaning on it against the separator, when his reverie breaks and he asks in confusion, “who’s Betty?”

“Oh, Miguel!”, Susie yells, “it’s like you never listen. Do you need your damn ears checked? Is there oil build up in there?”

Mary decides, foolishly, to get involved then. “Betty’s the art teacher”, she explains, Susie smiling sunnily at her.

“Like the pimp of the nudists?”

And Susie seems to deliberate between arguing and agreeing, but the trio are interrupted by a customer coming up to the till.

“Morning, sir.” Susie greets, and the customer breaks out of his lingering at Mary to reply.

“Hi, do I order here?” He asks, drumming his fingers dully against the wood of the counter. Mary regards him. The golden badge adorned on his breast says _T. Marchant_. He’s wearing a duck-egg blue police uniform, and Mary swallows. He looks off-duty, but she still finds herself surveying the room, just in case. They’re generally a trouble-less area, so having a police officer in her vicinity makes her a little nervous.

The nerves in her belly have nothing to do with the fact that the man before her is chiselled and handsome.

He has a five o’clock shadow, a light dusting of dark hair along his chops. His eyes are a warm amber, and when he smiles, it’s as if the sun is setting just behind them. He wears his smile a little crooked, and his nose looks as if it was broken many years ago. His face is lined with age, but Mary figures he’s still considered young, even if he’s sitting on the fence between the two. She presumes the stress of law enforcement can age you prematurely, anyway. His shoulders are broad, and he looks fit, though that probably comes with the job. His hair is a little browner than black, but in the right light, she suspects you probably couldn’t tell the difference. He stands much taller than her but doesn’t have much on Miguel, who stands at the respectable height of 5’11, something he felt needed announcing when they had first met.

She wets her lips, and then clears her throat when Susie’s foot nudges hers. She collects herself, blowing a stray hair from her face, and smiles warmly.

“Would you like me to show you to your table?” and she can feel Susie and Miguel’s stunned expressions burning a whole in the back of her head as she walks away, Mr Marchant tightly by her side. This confidence is anew.

She gestures for the officer to take a seat and leans against the back of the booth opposite him. “How’s your morning going?” She’s not the conversational type, but she doesn’t really want to walk away just yet.

“My morning’s going well, thank you—,” his eyes scan her uniform for her name-tag before his eyes land on it, and he smiles when he meets her eyes, “Mary. No trouble so far. What about your morning?”

“We’ve had no trouble, yet. So, it’s going pretty well.”

He laughs, warmly. “Yet?”

And she brings her voice low, then, teasing. “Yes, sir. It’s only 10.30am, sir. Anything can happen between now and closing.”

She lays no bait, but he takes the reel anyway. “You on ‘til close?”

She nods, mock-solemnly. “Yep. 5pm. Only six and half hours to go. You’re the most interesting thing to walk through that door, yet, besides Claude over there, but I see him every Wednesday”.

“What’s interesting about Claude?”

“French. He gets to critique our French bread and we get to better our recipe.” She smiles, inclining further into the booth, her hip aching, but she ignores the pang for now.

“You work every Wednesday, huh?” She nods. “Well, you must be pretty well-versed with the menu”, and she figures he’s nudging her towards what he came here for, so she stops the nonsense. She stands up straight, tucks her hair behind her ear, and lets the waitress in her take control.

“Yes, sir. Wednesday’s speciality is blueberry pancakes, but we also have chocolate chip, strawberry and full stack. We serve eggs: scrambled, fried, boiled, poached, or an omelette. We have French toast, as you know, as well as regular toast. We have hash browns, bacon, sausage, grilled cheese, Agnes’ favourite”, she nods over her shoulder to lady sat in a booth across the diner, “we have cereal, oatmeal, and we serve coffee, tea, juice or water”. She smiles, elated with the fact that she can still remember. Her regulars know what they want, so she hasn’t had to do it in a while.

“Well, that all sounds fantastic. I’m thinking omelette, with black coffee.” And she almost wants to chide him for making her recite the whole damn thing when all he wanted was that, but she doesn’t, because he’s a customer and that’d be unprofessional.

“Sure thing! We do cheddar, bacon, ham, onion and pepper, or just egg. Why we have so many options, I’ll never know.”

He laughs, rough. “Regular omelette sounds good to me. Are you going to write it down?”

“I have fantastic memory. Plus, it’s not exactly the Constitution. Regular omelette with black coffee.”

Mr Marchant smiles, coy. “Oh! Before I forget, is dinner with me next Friday night on the menu?”

Mary can feel her ears getting red, but she gets a grip of herself. “Yessir, but it’ll cost you $5.95 plus tax.”

“Sounds great.”

She nods, and then turns and walks towards the counter. When she gets there, she keeps her back to the newcomer and squeezes her eyes shut, and splays her palms against the counter, bracing herself as excitement overwhelms her. Is it her time now?

* * *

 

Mary had fallen pregnant in November of 1967, at the tender age of 22.

Her and Terry had been dating for a little under a year. After their dinner date, they’d been inseparable, spending every waking minute together, much to the disappointment of her parents, though they didn’t speak of it around her. She’d sat at the top of the stairs and heard them talking about it, though. They’d hoped for someone younger, irked by Terry being 11 years her senior. Apparently, being a broke student is more desirable than having a stable career, who knew?

She’d woken up one morning, feeling ever so nauseous, and had run to the bathroom to throw up yesterday’s lunch and dinner. She’d racked her brain of things she’d eaten, and things she’d drank, before falling down the _Oh, shit. I’m pregnant_ hole, that she never thought she’d be in. Her fears had been verified by a doctor that Terry had insisted on taking her to when she told him. He’d been hoping for a negative.

Terry wasn't happy. He'd claimed he was far too old to have children, and far too busy with his job, but at his behest, they arranged a marriage. He wouldn’t have a bastard child, and he wouldn’t have her looking like a fallen woman.

They moved into a quaint maisonette thirty minutes outside of town. Mary felt deserted, half an hour away from any body she knew, bar Terry, with no car. He called the shots, and she had no where to run if she disagreed.

They married in the December. Mary believed they call it a _shotgun wedding_. Her parents were distraught, her dreams of teaching being flushed. A waste. Terry didn’t much care for the affair.

Susie attends, as does Miguel, as witnesses and friends. Terry chastely kisses her. It’s over within 30 minutes. Terry gets drunk at the reception, and Mary’s rented wedding dress digs into her back where it’s too snug around the waist. She doesn’t think it’s maternity.

The first time he hits her, she’s 6 months pregnant.

She’d dropped a carton of milk on the floor, and it had gone everywhere. He’d stormed in when he heard the crash and had exploded at the sight of the mess. He’d ordered, _barked,_ at her to clean it up, and when she’d protested, _but I can’t bend over,_ he’d reared his hand back and smacked her across the face. She’d fallen against the island, thankfully back first, and he’d left her there, crying in pain and ashamed, with a baby kicking against her swollen belly. 

Their son was born in July 1968. He’d weighed 8lbs and 6oz and was 54cm long. They’d named him Aleksandr, after Terry’s paternal grandfather. He was raven-haired, and pale. Mary only saw Terry when she looked at him. He refused to breast-feed, and she felt repulsive to everyone around her.

Terry had recently taken a string of night shifts and had ordered Mary to go and stay with her parents, so she and the baby weren’t alone. Mary had revelled in the peace of her old haunt, the cottage offering comfort she hadn’t felt in months. The walls were warm colours, not littered with cracks and the birth of damp. The heating worked properly, and the doors had locks.

When Aleks was 3, Terry broke her arm. They were arguing about bills, about Mary not pulling her weight. Despite having a toddler that needed looking after, Terry expected her to work full time. She’d talked back. She’d dared to say, _and what about your son?_

He’d flung her against the banister, and Mary couldn’t tell if the _crack_ was the wood of the stairs or the bone in her forearm.

Terry had stormed out, and she’d crawled over to the landline and dialled Susie, begging her to come and pick her and Aleks up. She stayed at Susie’s for 3 weeks, until Terry’s begging had worn her down. Susie had warned her. Susie had said, _you’re going to regret this_ , but Mary hadn’t listened.

In 1976, when Aleks was 8, Mary had stayed at Susie’s for the night. Terry was on the warpath, and Mary wasn’t taking any chances. So, she packed a bag worthy of two weeks stay, but the guilt of leaving her only child with a man turned monster she once loved was enough to bring her back after the night was over with.

Aleks had ran to her embrace, his face stained-red with tears, and Mary had crumbled in the doorway. She’d made Terry a breakfast of champions, as a way of keeping the peace. She wasn’t sorry. She hadn’t done anything. She was sorry to Aleks, but not to his father.

In 1979, Aleks had said goodbye to his mother when she dropped him off at school. He’d leaned over the middle console and turned his face for her to kiss his cheek. She’d said, _I love you, sunshine. I’ll see you later,_ but Aleks would never see her again. Terry had come home, smelling of whiskey, and had turned the house upside down, he’d smashed things against the wall, he’d upturned furniture, he’d screamed at Aleks until his throat was raw and his face was beet-red.

Susie had visited, and then Miguel, and then Mary’s parents. They’d offered to put up posters. Terry wasn’t having it, preferring to handle things in his own way, but Aleks had tagged along. He missed his mother, and he’d do anything to get her back.

But posters yellowed, and whiter posters took their place.

The landline does not ring. Nobody knows where Mary Marchant is. 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a character study that I hope gives some insight into the members of Aleks' family that play a very important role in this work.
> 
> I fell in love with both Mary and Susie writing this, and I hope you do too.
> 
> This is, as usual, unbeta'ed so if you catch mistakes, let me know. 
> 
> Thank you for reading. I'm over @mightydogfood on Tumblr.
> 
> Chapter title is from Mary by Big Thief.
> 
> ♡ Until next time ♡


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